


Envy the Subtle Serpent

by walkwithursus



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alcohol, And by D I mean Drama, Angst, Asexuality, BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), Buckle up, Comrade Crowley, Is Crowley the Smoke Monster From Lost?, Jealous Crowley (Good Omens), Magic, Mystery, Oblivious Aziraphale (Good Omens), Protective Crowley, Slow Burn, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Suspense, This fic is all about the D, perhaps, the slowest of burns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2020-07-23 05:20:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20002960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/walkwithursus/pseuds/walkwithursus
Summary: A mysterious bookshop patron strikes up an unlikely friendship with Aziraphale. Crowley sees right through the stranger's charming exterior to the serpent that lies beneath. Like recognizes like.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the talented [xpityx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xpityx) for the beta, and to [ladadee195](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladadee195/pseuds/Ladadee195) for the encouragement!

It was a fine Thursday evening near the end of July. The slowly setting sun allowed for just enough warmth to sit on the outside patio of Soho’s newest Italian restaurant, where Crowley and Aziraphale had just eaten a rather fine meal. The atmosphere and lovely weather should have made for a pleasant experience overall. But something was dreadfully wrong. 

“Alright, angel?” Crowley asked, unable to abide the tension any longer. 

“Mm? Oh, yes. Fine.” 

Aziraphale nudged the last bits of chocolate gateau around his plate without looking up. He’d worn the same preoccupied expression throughout most of the evening, as though his mind was so far away he wasn’t even aware of the world’s continued existence around him, of honking horns and decadent desserts and the increasingly agitated demon sitting opposite. The silence was beginning to flay Crowley’s last nerve. An immortal being like Aziraphale could think himself into a catatonic state if he weren’t careful. Not that Crowley would let that happen. Not again. 

“You don’t look fine,” Crowley observed shrewdly. 

Aziraphale didn’t answer. After a frustrated beat he tried again. 

“Well, if you’re as fine as you say you are, you wouldn’t mind if I took the last little bite of this…?” With exaggerated slowness, Crowley made to stab at Aziraphale’s dessert with his unused fork. Before it could hit its mark, Aziraphale yanked the plate aside. Crowley smirked triumphantly. It was practically automatic, but the motion seemed to shake him from his stupor. 

“So sorry, dear, did you want some...?” Aziraphale pushed the plate back in his direction.

“No. Just checking your reflexes.”

The fog was clearing incrementally from behind the angel’s eyes. He sighed, as though it were just now occurring to him that he’d wasted a perfectly good evening caught up in his own head. The aglio e olio had been delightful and he hadn’t even tasted it. 

“Do forgive me. I’m afraid I’m a bit distracted tonight.”

Crowley shrugged the apology off. “What’s on your mind, angel?”

Aziraphale hesitated a moment, as if unsure how to phrase whatever it was that had been concerning him. He set his fork down and folded his napkin. “It’s just,” he leaned forward over the tablecloth and dropped his voice to a murmur. Crowley mirrored the motion, the better to hear him. “A customer came into the bookshop today.” 

Crowley snorted. “There’s a surprise.”

“No! Well, yes but this was different,” Aziraphale clarified hastily. “This man, he said he knew me by reputation. Knew how loathe I was to part with anything. Said he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Well, that’s not that unusual, is it?” Crowley asked, squinting in thought. “I mean, from what I’ve seen, anyone who actually wants to walk out of your store with a book in their hand has got to be pretty aggressive.”

“Yes, but usually they’re not that hard to turn away. They talk a big talk, but in the end it’s all empty threats and I can get them out the door. This man, though… He seemed serious.” 

“Did he buy anything?” 

“Goodness, no.” Aziraphale sat up straighter. “I’m not that easily intimidated. But I get the feeling that he’ll be back. And _soon._ ”

Frowning, Crowley kicked back in his chair so that it teetered precariously on its two hind legs. “So, what was he, do you think? CIA? KGB?”

The frown lines around Aziraphale’s mouth tightened, and his eyes narrowed. “Actually, he said he was the library director over at Oxford.”

“A librarian, huh?” The image was at odds with the villain Crowley had conjured up in his mind. He sucked on his teeth to keep from laughing. “Troublesome lot. One of ours, you know.”

Aziraphale glared at him, unamused. “It’s not funny, Crowley. Though I suppose I shouldn’t have expected you to understand.”

“You’re right. I don't understand,” Crowley admitted. Sensing that Aziraphale was about to close off, all traces of humor fled from his face. “It's just - I mean, this sort of thing. It’s happened before, right?”

“Right.”

“So, why don’t you just - ?” Crowley snapped his fingers to indicate a miracle. 

The angel hesitated, sawing his bottom lip with a pearly white incisor. “Normally I would. But in this instance… Well, I get the feeling it would be wrong. He’s not like the others. I don’t think he has malicious intent.”

“Malicious intent?” Crowley repeated, incredulous. “Aziraphale. The guy comes into your bookshop, _threatens_ you, and you don’t think he has malicious intent?”

“No, I don’t think he did. At least, he didn’t seem to want to do me any harm.”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Is that what it takes? For fuck’s sake, Aziraphale, it shouldn’t always take a mafia shakedown for you to stand up for yourself.” 

“Yes, I know," the angel said crisply, arms folded across his chest. “But it still doesn’t seem right to punish him just for taking an interest in my work.”

Crowley gave him a shrewd once-over behind his sunglasses. 

“But you’d still like him gone.”

After a moment’s hesitation Aziraphale nodded, his lips pursed. The expression was unbearably familiar, given the sheer number of times Crowley had seen it over the centuries. It was the face the angel made when he wanted something done, something too dirty for him to sully his immaculate hands with, the face he made when he wanted Crowley to indulge a foolish whim or perform a frivolous miracle in his stead. It was almost comical how well Crowley knew the other being at this point. Aziraphale probably thought he was being subtle, getting Crowley to propose the idea of his own accord. Either that, or they were so used to manipulating one another after six thousand years it didn’t occur to him that he could just ask the other for a favor.

Crowley pretended to mull the information over. “You think he’s gonna come back?”

Aziraphale nodded again. “Quite soon, I expect.”

“Well..." Crowley dragged the moment out for theatrics before heaving a put-upon sigh. "I suppose I could rearrange my schedule, come round the shop tomorrow. Ward this guy off for you if he turns up again.” 

From across the table, Aziraphale beamed at him. “Oh, would you really? You have no idea how much that would mean to me, Crowley. Thank you.”

“Yeah, whatever. Don’t mention it again,” Crowley said, scowling for effect.

True to form, Aziraphale didn’t mention it again for the rest of the evening. But he continued to aim little smiles of gratitude Crowley’s way as he finished the last of his dessert and licked the silverware clean. Crowley pretended not to notice. 

_____________

The next morning Crowley turned up to the bookshop bright and early with a box of pastries. Aziraphale was still drinking his morning cup of tea when Crowley found him upstairs, and they chatted for a while over the breakfast table, munching croissants and refilling their teacups long after the kettle should have run dry. 

By the time Aziraphale decided he could put off opening the bookshop no longer it was nearly eleven, and they descended the stairs together into the dusty storefront. With a reluctant gesture, Aziraphale unlocked the front doors, donned his white gloves, and began sorting through a large pile of books behind the counter. Wordlessly, Crowley shed his human skin and slithered to a high shelf, where the sun that filtered through the window created a large, inviting warm patch. 

He expected to have to wait quite a while for Aziraphale’s mystery-customer-slash-agressor to turn up. But the store had barely been open ten minutes before the bell above the door tinkled, rousing Crowley from the beginnings of a nap. The towering shelves momentarily concealed the stranger from view, and so he flicked out his tongue to scent the air. A whiff of dry cleaning and expensive cologne smacked him in the face like a frying pan. If he’d been a human, he might’ve gagged. 

Seconds later, a middle-aged man appeared from behind a shelf, strolling straight for the front counter. He was tall, good looking and well-groomed, like something out of a GQ magazine. Crowley hated him instantly. 

“Mr. Fell. Good to see you.” Aziraphale looked up from the counter as the man approached, arms spread wide in greeting. His deep voice carried a plain, unattractive cadance. An American, then.

“Good morning,” Aziraphale answered stiffly. The latex gloves came off his hands with a loud plasticky snap. 

“Busy day so far?”

“Just the usual. Is there something you wanted?” 

Though the shop wasn’t exactly known for its welcoming atmosphere, Crowley couldn’t recall ever seeing Aziraphale behave quite so coolly before. If snakes were capable of feeling pride, Crowley was fairly certain that was the emotion he would have been experiencing just now.

The American man whistled, as though he, too, were impressed. 

“Straight to the point, huh? You know, I admire that. Really, I do.” He flashed a set of dazzling white teeth as he lounged against the counter. “Well, I just thought it might interest you to know that I’d been thinking about our conversation yesterday. And it occurred to me that I may have gone about this all the wrong way.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes.” A list materialized from a suit pocket, presumably of books the human was keen to get his hands on. It was a rather long list. “As much as we at Oxford would like to actually acquire some of the materials you’ve got here, I understand your reluctance to part with your personal collection. But I think I might have come up with a workable solution.” 

Aziraphale hummed, unconvinced. “And what might that be?” 

The man had begun to pace the counter, running an idle finger along the spine of a nearby book. To Crowley, the act was decidedly threatening, a display of dominance. Aziraphale appeared unaffected. “How would you feel about working with our archives department?” 

“Archives department,” Aziraphale repeated. He looked slightly miffed, as though whatever impression he had of the concept didn’t quite line up with what the man was suggesting. “How exactly would that be different than you buying my books?”

“Well, in this instance, we wouldn’t keep them. You’d allow our archivists to temporarily borrow the materials so that they can digitize them, and when they’re done, they’d be returned to you.”

“Digitize?” 

“Scan them electronically. After that the files are uploaded to our electronic catalogue, where they’ll be accessible to anyone in the world.”

“I see.” For the first time, Aziraphale looked rather intimidated. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about computers.”

The director laughed, flashing that veneered smile again. “It’s not as complicated as it sounds, I promise. I really think you’d appreciate the work we’re doing. The whole point of the program is to preserve these materials for future generations. Paper doesn’t last forever, you know. Honestly, it’s a miracle so many of your books have remained in such good shape for as long as they have.”

“Climate control,” Aziraphale explained vaguely. 

The director seemed to accept this at face value, despite the fact that under ordinary circumstances, the dusty, unkempt bookshop was essentially a literary graveyard where books came to die. Instead, he clapped his big hands together and said, “So, what do you think?”

Aziraphale started at the noise and cast an eye around, shifting from foot to foot. “Oh, I don’t. I don’t rightly know. I’d have to give it a bit more thought,” he hedged. “You say you wouldn’t… keep them?”

“That’s right,” said the man. 

“And when you’re done, people all over the world could look at them on- on a computer?”

“Yep. Pretty incredible, right?” 

Aziraphale didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no either. Judging by the way he was suddenly wringing his hands, it was obvious he was hesitating.

“Come on,” the director drawled, and he leaned over the counter to punch Aziraphale playfully on the arm. “You know I won’t take no for an answer.”

High up on the shelf, Crowley saw red. 

Metaphorically speaking, of course, since he was essentially color blind as a snake. But the sentiment stood. By laying a hand on Aziraphale, the human had crossed a line, breached an unspoken boundary that had existed for six millennia; it didn’t matter that he didn’t know the rules. No One Touched Aziraphale. 

With a low, threatening hiss Crowley slid down from his spot atop the bookshelf and began slithering along the counter, weaving between piles of books and assorted clutter. The mess kept him well covered, allowing him to approach undetected. Up close, he could see that the director had both elbows on the surface and was leaning forward into Aziraphale’s space. His stupid human body was several centimeters taller than the angel’s corporation, which was wholly unacceptable. Like a soldier from the battlements, Crowley ventured out from his last vestiges of cover and headed straight for the man. 

“Listen, you don’t have to decide right now,” he was crooning, smooth as silk. “Why don’t you come down to the library next week? Take a tour of the archives department, see what I’m talking about. After that we can discuss the - oh, Jesus Christ, is that a snake?!”

The director leapt back from the counter in a wide, stumbling arc as Crowley wriggled his thick body to a stop in front of the angel. The sight filled Crowley with immense satisfaction, as did the sudden scent of the man’s sweat on the air. There was nothing like the sharp odor of adrenaline and fear to soothe a demon’s troubled soul. 

Aziraphale fixed Crowley with a look of exasperated fondness, like an indulgent parent too entertained by their child’s antics to properly chastise them. “Oh, my, look who’s here,” he murmured, running a single fingertip down the length of Crowley’s spine. 

Seemingly embarrassed, the director tried to set himself to rights, shooting his cuffs and squaring his shoulders. “That _thing_ is _yours?_ ” He asked, his tone accusatory. 

“Er. He’s his own snake, really. Does he frighten you?”

“No,” the man sniffed, taking a single step forward as though to prove it. He was not as close to the counter as he had been a moment ago, but he was no longer quite so far away either. For the most part, he seemed to have recovered himself, which ran contrary to Crowley’s plan - he'd expected the human to book it out the door the moment he saw him. Crowley leveled him with a cold, yellow gaze that communicated quite plainly, _get out._

“Just snuck up on me is all,” the man was saying, drawing himself up to full height.

“He has a knack for that.” 

Crowley bumped his snout against Aziraphale’s hand to encourage another stroke, which he received. 

“Do you just let him run loose in here?” 

“Sometimes," Aziraphale answered evasively.

“And nobody’s ever complained?”

“Not thus far.”

The American took another step closer. His face was warped, a twisted little smirk that seemed to hint that in his experience, the best way to overcome an insecurity was to feign confidence. Normally, Crowley could respect that. Under any other circumstances, he might have. But at the sight of the man’s huge hand rapidly approaching his body, rational thought fled his mind, and he reared back to strike. 

“Can I touch - ?”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t - “

It was too late. With a threatened hiss, Crowley lunged for the hand in front of his face, fangs out. The director leapt back just in time, and Crowley snapped on thin air. His entire body roiled, tail thrashing, knocking books and papers off the counter as fat drops of secreted venom splattered the wooden counter top. 

“Oh, goodness,” Aziraphale cried, rushing around the counter in a flurry of concern. “I’m so sorry! Are you alright? Did he get you?”

The director looked frazzled, clutching his hand against his chest. A wave of angelic calm washed over the room and his expression cleared. 

“No, I’m fine! I’m fine. Close call though,” he answered, shaking out his hand and breathing a theatrical sigh of relief. 

Had he the orbital sockets for it, Crowley might have rolled his eyes. 

“Are you quite certain? Oh, that was just so unexpected! I really had no idea he would do that!”

“It’s alright. Just a stupid animal."

Having affirmed that the director was not, in fact, injured, Aziraphale flounced back around the counter and paused in front of Crowley. “I’ll be right back, let me just get him out of here," he said, addressing the man. Before Crowley could react, Aziraphale had scooped him up like a misbehaved puppy and trotted him off to the backroom, hissing words of admonishment under his breath all the way. The world spun around him as he tumbled out of Aziraphale’s arms and onto a cushion. 

“Stay here!” The angel whispered harshly before slamming the door behind him. 

Crowley stared after him. Shocked. Hurt. And then absolutely _furious._

There was no reason for Aziraphale to be angry with him! Crowley had only done what he’d wanted. _Get rid of the guy without using a miracle._ This was the best way he knew how, and it had worked countless times before. Six millenia worth of experience had taught Crowley that the sight of a great big snake usually sent humans running for the hills. How was he supposed to know this one idiot of a man would try and touch him without permission? Did Americans just not have boundaries? And what, was he just not supposed to defend himself, when the guy had first laid a hand on Aziraphale, and then attempted to lay one on himself? If anything, Crowley thought he deserved worse than a measly little snakebite, and would’ve been happy to provide it had he the correct number of limbs for the job. 

Seething, Crowley slithered off the cushion and over to the door to listen. Through the wood, he could hear the angel’s muffled voice offering rapid-fire apologies while the library director assured him again and again that he was alright.

Eventually the frantic quality in Aziraphale’s voice dissipated, and the two began speaking in calm, polite tones, so unlike the hostility that had permeated their earlier conversation. With his inferior reptilian hearing, Crowley couldn’t quite make out what was being said. He tried morphing back to his human form, the better to eavesdrop with, but found he was too upset to concentrate properly. Effectively stuck, he waited until the bell above the bookshop door sounded, signaling the director’s exit. He then retreated hastily to the armchair where Aziraphale had left him and coiled in on himself, the picture of nonchalance. 

Within moments Aziraphale appeared in the backroom, hands on his hips and righteous indignation painted across his face. Crowley wilted under his gaze.

“Well, that was rather rude, don’t you think?” 

Crowley flipped his tongue out in disagreement, peering over the coil of his body with unblinking eyes. 

“I mean, really, Crowley. What if you’d actually bitten him? You could have killed him. Or maimed him at the very least. You’re lucky he pulled back in time.”

The one-sided reprimand really wasn’t doing it for him. With a burst of concentration, Crowley assumed his human form and stumbled to his feet. It was a slapdash job. His limbs were loose, his tongue barely fit for producing sounds, let alone communicable language. He tried anyway. 

“You assked me to clear him off.”

Aziraphale frowned reproachfully at him from across the room. “Yes, well, I didn’t ask you to take a chunk out of him, did I?”

“What does it matter? I missed.”

“That’s not the point! You shouldn’t have tried to bite him in the first place. He wasn’t going to hurt you, Crowley.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t like people touching me,” Crowley spat venomously. His skin crawled at the thought of that huge, unfamiliar hand on his body. 

Aziraphale had the audacity to look hurt. “You’ve never said that before. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have - ”

“Not you,” Crowley clarified, exasperated. “Strangers. Humans.”

“Oh.”

There was a lull. The angel pressed his lips together into a thin line, which usually meant he was trying to get a handle over his emotions. Crowley leaned heavily against a nearby shelf and willed his legs to be steady underneath him. His entire body was putting up a valiant effort, but the control he had over his human form was tenuous at the best of times. Arguing with Aziraphale was not helping. 

Much as he’d like to be petty, Crowley didn’t feel like fighting, especially not over something as trivial as a human, and a stranger at that. So, in keeping with time-honored tradition, the demon extended the proverbial olive branch first. 

“I wasn’t really going to bite him.”

Aziraphale glanced up at him, suspicion written across his face. “Really?” 

“Really.”

It was only half a lie. Crowley could have changed course at the last minute, if he’d wanted to. He hadn’t been planning on it in the moment, but still, the option had technically been there.

The angel pondered the admission a moment before issuing a curt, seemingly satisfied nod. He came out from the doorway and into the room, smoothing his clothing as though the garments were rumpled feathers. 

“Well, alright then. No harm done, I suppose.” 

“No harm done,” echoed Crowley, and he sagged into the armchair he had just abandoned, still feeling a bit prickly. The angel collapsed into the chair across from him and let out a small groan.

“Do you know, that was all rather exhausting,” he admitted. 

Crowley vocalized in agreement. “I hate humans.” 

“No you don’t.”

“No I don’t.”

For a while they lounged in silence, sober thanks to the early hour. At length, Aziraphale checked his pocket watch. 

“Oh, look at the time. Shall we do lunch?”

“Please,” Crowley said, eager for the distraction. Lunch meant guilt-free day drinking, and after everything that had just transpired, Crowley felt he had more than earned a little indulgence.

Aziraphale smiled, and together they stood and left the bookshop, which had been open for a grand total of forty-five minutes that day.


	2. Chapter 2

At lunch, Crowley tried again to justify his almost-attack on the American, and once again Aziraphale shut him down, only this time over a glass of Chateâu Lafite. Apparently his self-defense argument was incredibly flimsy when one considered the fact that the library director was a fragile human and Crowley an immortal demon. According to Aziraphale, he could not claim to have been afraid for his life, no matter what size or shape his vessel had taken in the moment, because the human hadn't intended him any harm. Crowley disagreed quite vehemently. The sheer number of times Aziraphale had almost been discorporated by innocent, _fragile_ humans should have proven his point in one. 

After paying for the meal they parted ways, and Crowley went straight home to sulk. He took the stairs up to his flat for the simple pleasure of stomping on them, and in case the noise wasn’t enough to piss off his neighbors he broke the elevator for good measure. Once inside, Crowley slouched in the doorway and snapped his fingers. Every last set of drapes in the flat whisked themselves shut in an instant, creating the shadowy ambiance of a sterile crypt.

In the bedroom Crowley set his mobile on high volume and placed it carefully beside his pillow. On the off-chance that Aziraphale called to apologize, Crowley wanted to be able to consciously ignore it, or at the very least wait until the last ring to pick up. With a final complicated gesture, he miracled a summer thunderstorm outside the window and crawled under his duvet to hibernate for the foreseeable future. 

Tuesday morning rolled around and Crowley stirred. The knowledge that he was meant to do something today rattled around in his brain like an empty tin can on a moving bus. He chased the thought lazily, and recalled that Aziraphale had suggested weeks ago that they travel to the not-so-distant village of Ashwell for a parade. Moaning into his pillow, Crowley cursed his impeccable internal clock and started to get up. 

Dragging himself out of bed was a challenge. When he finally managed to stand he felt weighted down, as though with every step he was wading through a pool of neck-deep water. A shot of espresso from the machine in the kitchen cleared some of the residual sludge, and after miracling his clothes clean and his hair decent Crowley left the flat in favor of the bookshop. On his way out of the building, he bypassed the out-of-order notice for the elevator and regained a slight spring in his step. 

The little sign in the shop’s front window was turned to CLOSED when Crowley arrived, but the door unlocked under his touch. He found Aziraphale tucked away at his workbench near the back, carefully peeling stickers off an old book with an extremely small spatula. The smell of the liquid adhesive remover wrinkled Crowley’s nose as he approached.

“Morning, angel.”

Aziraphale jumped in his seat as Crowley poured himself into the closest chair. “Goodness, I didn’t hear you come in! Good morning. Excited for the parade?” Crowley grunted noncommittally as the angel turned back to his project. “I’m almost finished up here, and then we can get going.”

In an effort to get him into the spirit of things, Aziraphale launched into a detailed description of the parade’s history and an itinerary for the day. Their argument on Friday might as well not have happened for all it mattered now, and not for the first time Crowley felt a little foolish for putting as much effort into sulking as he had. Azirapale obviously hadn’t thought about it, or him, at all over the weekend, which was probably for the best. Crowley already felt embarrassed enough without the angel knowing the extent of his hurt feelings. As Aziraphale prattled on Crowley relaxed and scrolled listlessly through his phone, humming and hawing where appropriate to project the impression that his attention was not as rapt as it really was. Aziraphale knew better, of course, but Crowley had an image to maintain. 

The peace of the morning was abruptly shattered by an incoming call on the bookshop’s ancient rotary telephone. For a moment they stared at it in shocked silence, then turned to one another. 

“Who could that - ?”

“I don’t know.” Crowley cut him off, perplexed. Somehow he had gotten it in his head that he was the only one who ever called Aziraphale. He’d certainly never heard the phone ring in his shop before. “It’s not _me,_ obviously. Who else has your number?” 

Aziraphale shook his head in lieu of an answer. The telephone was still ringing shrilly across the shop, that old, classic trill no modern mobile phone possessed. Wearing a slight frown, Aziraphale stood and picked his way over to it. He cleared his throat professionally before answering. 

“A.Z. Fell and Co, purveyor of rare books and special collections, Mr. Fell speaking.” 

Someone spoke on the other line, and the angel’s face sparked with recognition. 

“Mr. Blackburn! Hello! Yes, I was expecting your call.” Aziraphale shot a hilariously panicked glance at Crowley as if to indicate that no, he had not been expecting a call, but it would have been rude to say otherwise. “Er, how are you?”

There was a pause as Mr. Blackburn answered. Crowley strained his ears to hear what was being said, but was unable to catch more than a few words. He did, however, recognize the deep American accent, and his mouth flooded reflexively with venom.

“No, no, I hadn’t forgotten,” Aziraphale was saying, continuing the conversation from his end. “I still have your card. I’m afraid the week’s just gotten away from me, you know how it goes. Tomorrow?” Aziraphale raised his eyebrows in Crowley’s direction, as if hoping for input. With a burst of panic, Crowley considered miracling the antique telephone to some sort of speaker mode, but refrained on the grounds that it would be an infringement on Aziraphale’s privacy. “Er, that would be fine. Eleven o’clock? Certainly. Yes, alright. I’ll see you tomorrow then. Thank you. Yes, take care.”

Aziraphale placed the receiver back in its cradle. Crowley waited for him to speak first, feeling a bit like he was about to implode from the suspense. The angel headed back over to his workbench and leaned against the chair. 

“That was the man from last week,” he announced. “The librarian who came by the shop, you remember.”

“How could I forget?” Crowley muttered, trying and failing to keep the muscle in his jaw from twitching. “What did he want?”

“He invited me to come and take a tour of the Bodleian,” Aziraphale mused, quite oblivious to Crowley’s discomfort. “He mentioned it last week as well, but I said I’d have to think about it. I guess he was just calling to reaffirm the offer.” 

It was only Tuesday, which meant that the director had given Aziraphale exactly one business day to get in touch before reaching out himself. Not exactly patient, this guy. 

“And you’re gonna go?”

“I’ve said I would,” Aziraphale answered slowly, as though he were still coming around to the idea himself. “I’m still not happy about him wanting to buy all my books. But I’ll admit, I am rather curious about this digital archives program. I’ve lost a handful of things over the years, you know, and if the humans have figured out a way of preserving things beyond the physical copy… Well, it might be worth looking into. And it would be nice to see the Bodleian again. It’s been an age since I was there last.” 

With no small amount of effort, Crowley bit his tongue. A twisted sense of foreboding had settled in his gut at the thought of that wretched human anywhere near the angel, but considering this was something Aziraphale wanted to do for himself, there was no sense in him protesting. He already had a pretty good idea what Aziraphale would say if he did. 

“So this is happening tomorrow?” Crowley grit out, nudging his glasses further up his nose.

“Yes,” said the angel. “Eleven o’clock.”

“Great. I’ll take you.” 

Aziraphale’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “Oh, that - that’s quite alright. You don’t have to. I’m perfectly capable of taking the bus.”

“Nonsense,” said Crowley, rapidly growing attached to the idea. Call it a side-effect of his angelic disposition, but Aziraphale had proven time and again that when it came to humans (or archangels, or the Almighty), he was not the best judge of character. And Crowley had seen for himself the way that so-called Mr. Blackburn had walked about the shop, manhandling the books as though he owned them and breaching the angel’s personal space without a second thought. Crowley didn't trust him, which meant that he could not, in good conscience, let the angel go to Oxford alone.

“Come on, it’d take you two hours by bus,” Crowley continued. “The Bentley will get you there in forty-five minutes.”

“But what would you do while I’m there?” Aziraphale fretted. “I don’t know how long this tour will take. It could be quite awhile, and I’d hate to make you wait for me. Although, I suppose I could always take the bus _back_...”

“It’s a college town, angel,” said Crowley, waving a hand. “I’m sure I’ll be able to stir up some sort of trouble to keep occupied.” At Aziraphale’s look of disapproval he added, “or I could just take a nap in the car. Either or. Come on, just say yes.” 

“Well, if you’re sure.” Aziraphale wrung his hands out of habit, teetering on the brink of acceptance. “I suppose it would be more convenient…” 

“Course I’m sure,” Crowley said firmly, and he stood up before Aziraphale could change his mind. “Now come on, let’s go see this bloody parade.”

_____

The average car could travel the distance from London to Oxford in about two hours, permitted there were no stops and the traffic was behaving normally. Aziraphale’s appointment at Bodleian Library was scheduled for 11am the following day. Crowley picked him up at 10:30. 

Aziraphale was already waiting on the street outside the bookshop by the time the Bentley careened into view, bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet and fiddling anxiously with the handle of his briefcase. The front left tire of the Bentley hopped the curb as Crowley squealed to a halt right in front of him. Aziraphale threw open the door. 

“You’re late!” He hissed, scrambling into the passenger seat and buckling himself in. 

“Not yet,” growled Crowley, and he stomped on the gas. 

They shot out of London like a bullet from the barrel of a gun, tearing through the traffic and pedestrians as though the only solid thing for miles were the antique car. The momentum plastered the angel flat against the seat, lips ghostly white and knuckles drawn taut as he gripped the center console for dear life. Crowley eyed him sidelong and smirked. 

It wasn’t until they left the crowded streets of the city that Aziraphale finally relaxed. The roads were more open on the M40, more appropriate for the break-neck speeds Crowley preferred, and he released his death grip on the leather interior and flexed his pudgy fingers. With a small sigh of relief, he pushed the preset for the classical station, set the volume knob to a more modest level than where Crowley usually kept it, and settled back to enjoy the drive. 

They had been to the Bodleian before - together in fact, though it had been many, many years. Crowley had been the one to suggest the idea of a legal deposit to Thomas Bodley back in the 1600’s, therein securing free materials for the depressingly underfunded library and ripping off publishing houses in the process.

To Crowley’s mild surprise, the Oxford area hadn’t changed a great deal since then. A few of the houses and shops had been remodeled over the years, but the general locations of the university’s many buildings were the same. That was one of the nice things about monumental architecture; people tended to leave it alone, even if it eventually turned to ruin. 

The Bentley slowed to a 40 mph crawl as they entered the city. The Oxford area was an oasis for pedestrians and cyclists alike, meaning the few automobile-friendly streets were alarmingly narrow. Crowley navigated them through it with a scowl, letting out the air of several bike tires as they passed and coughing exhaust into scandalized faces. 

After a series of full-speed turns, the library came into view, and Aziraphale gasped appreciatively beside him. Originally built in the 14th century, the towering Bodleian resembled a sturdily constructed Gothic castle, complete with dozens of fearsome spires and row upon row of chiseled, gurning faces. 

Crowley pulled over on a square of pavement reserved for emergency service vehicles and killed the engine. 

“Look at that! One minute to spare,” Crowley proclaimed, angling his watch face for Aziraphale to see.

Aziraphale tore his gaze away from the library and balked at his expression of triumph. “One minute!” He squeaked, gathering his battered briefcase from near his feet and fumbling with the lock on the passenger side door. “My dear boy, that’s hardly enough time at all!” 

Crowley offered no further comment as the angel continued to compile his belongings in a state of panic. Once he’d got everything ready, Aziraphale paused with his grip on the door handle, looking suddenly quite unsure of himself.

“It’ll be fine,” Crowley said, belying his own reluctance to see the angel go with a tone of lazy confidence. Aziraphale had a tendency to get nervous right before any major undertaking, and it appeared this silly little tour was no exception. There was no need for him to be worried now - not when Crowley had accompanied the angel for the sole purpose of keeping him safe. “I’ll wait for you here, yeah?” 

Aziraphale gave him a funny, fond look, all crinkly around the eyes. “Thank you,” he sighed, and he exited the car. Pausing to squint through the tinted window, he issued Crowley a tiny wave and then turned smartly on the spot. The angel’s shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath before he set off in a trot for the enormous library building. Aziraphale would arrive on time. None of the clocks in the Bodleian would move until he did. 

Exhaling hugely, Crowley popped a fresh CD in the disc player and settled back to wait. 

The campus seemed somehow emptier than Crowley might have expected it to be, until he remembered that it was summer and that most of the students would be on holiday. The select few who stayed behind had to be quite dedicated to their studies - that, or they were all gluttons for punishment. Either way, easy targets in Crowley’s book; not unlike shooting fish in a barrel.

Absently, he combed the thoughts of the passersby, seeking out wayward souls receptive to a bit of demonic influence. After severing ties with Hell the year before, Crowley did so more out of habit than a sense of duty or obligation. A six thousand year old leopard wasn’t likely to change his spots, after all, and he was terribly good at what he did. And it was nice, in a way, being able to tempt on his own terms (and with no extraneous paperwork to boot). Almost like retirement.

A passing professor’s briefcase split open, and the newly graded exams she’d been carrying blew away in a sudden gust of wind; Crowley’s Deed for the Day. He thought about what Hastur would have to say about that and grinned.

After two hours, a few dropped laptops and a most unfortunate hoverboard crash, Crowley began to fidget. The CD was halfway through its third iteration, and there had been no sign of Aziraphale since he’d disappeared through the front doors. Crowley was beginning to regret letting him go alone - or at all, really. He should have capitalized on Aziraphale’s hesitation in the car, offered to turn them around then and there and book it straight back to London before he could change his mind.

As if Aziraphale would have accepted such a proposal. And even if he had, Crowley knew they would have arrived back at the bookshop only for the angel to proclaim how silly it was for him to have gotten nervous in the first place. Then Crowley would have had to sit through yet another lecture about not letting Aziraphale chicken out of things at the first sign of discomfort.

Even that might have been preferable to sitting here now, glaring a hole through the library doors and biting his nails down to the quick. Crowley considered leaving the confines of the car and venturing into the library after the angel, or setting off the fire alarm and forcing an emergency evacuation, but he knew deep down that to do so would be overdramatic. When he concentrated, he could sense Aziraphale’s presence like his own heartbeat, calm and steady and close-by. And so, as the CD began its fourth repetition, Crowley kept one finger on the pulse of the angel’s grace and closed his eyes. 

Some time later, he sensed a change and snapped to attention. Across the paved courtyard, the great wooden doors opened, and Aziraphale exited the library alongside the increasingly familiar figure of the director. Crowley watched their approach over the tops of his sunglasses, leaning over into the passenger seat to get a better look. They were talking and laughing. Mr. Blackburn had a casual hand somewhere on Aziraphale’s back and was guiding the angel as though he needed help across a flat stretch of ground. The sight of it drew a soft snarl from his lips. Crowley could only hope the hand was hovering and not actually touching. 

Aziraphale and the director paused a few meters away at the edge of the paved courtyard. Crowley surreptitiously cracked his window to hear what was being said. 

“Are you sure I can’t tempt you to lunch?”

“Oh, no. So kind of you to offer, but I really do have a ride waiting,” said Aziraphale, smiling as big as anything.

“Another time, then.”

“Yes, another time.”

After a few more parting words they shook hands, and Aziraphale turned and headed for the car. The director’s eyes trailed after him before zeroing in on the Bentley. Sensing an opportunity to present himself, Crowley got out and sauntered around to the passenger side door to meet Aziraphale. 

“Angel,” he greeted, holding it open for him like the gentleman he had once been. 

Aziraphale paused in front of him, surprised but pleased. “Thank you, my dear,” he said, and he ducked into the car. Crowley waited until he was situated properly to close the door behind him, at which point he turned and met the cool gaze of the director. 

Despite the distance between them, it felt like a formal introduction, their first encounter involving four legs. They exchanged stiff nods, and Crowley felt certain the man had just cemented him in his head as some sort of adversary. The feeling was delightfully mutual. 

Crowley waited until the director looked away first, a contest of wills. It didn’t take long. Even with his demonically slitted pupils hidden, the black depths of Crowley’s sunglasses unsettled most humans. With an eventual grimace, Mr. Blackburn turned around and stalked off toward the library. Crowley waited until he was nearly gone to take his seat in the Bentley.

Aziraphale positively beamed at him.

“How’d it go?” Crowley asked, smiling despite himself as he started the car. “Or do I even need to ask?”

With a happy wiggle, Aziraphale launched into a play-by-play of the entire tour, starting from the moment he had met Mr. Blackburn in his office and spiraling off from there.

“I was trying very hard to seem surprised by everything, but I must have slipped up at one point, because he asked if I’d been there before. I had to confess that yes, I had, but it had been such a long time that I was quite happy to see everything all over again.

“And the archives program, it’s so _interesting._ I was worried I wouldn’t understand the technology, but from what I can tell they’re just photographs. Of course, they explained it all to me, but I’m afraid I didn’t really understand the details.

“And you’ll have to help me figure out how to look at everything on my computer tonight. I had Mr. Blackburn write down the address - er, the website address, that is. He said anyone can access their materials from anywhere in the world, so that’s got to include me, right? I do hope my computer isn’t too old for it. Oh! And before I forget, how does one go about applying for an E-Mail?”

As the Bentley pulled into one of their favorite old pubs on the outskirts of London, Crowley laughed and tried his best to explain the technological advancements of the last few decades to the ancient angel. The little flutter of anxiety that had sparked in his stomach earlier that afternoon remained present throughout their meal, but it was manageable now that they were together again. And Crowley found that he could ignore the scent of the unfamiliar man that lingered on Aziraphale’s clothing, because the angel’s smiles were just for him.


	3. Chapter 3

Aziraphale managed to hold off on a partnership with the Bodleian for another month after the tour, citing schedule conflicts and arbitrary concerns and a variety of other flimsy excuses as reasons not to move forward. Crowley was both surprised and impressed by his restraint. The angel had seemed to have such a good time on his tour, Crowley had almost forgotten how protective Aziraphale could be over his hoard of books. Yet despite his best efforts, the strong-arm of the director soon proved too great a match for the angel's adopted English courtesy, and he agreed to participate in a trial-run with the archives department. 

The project started off slowly. So long as he was allowed to supervise the process, Aziraphale permitted the employees at the Bodleian to archive a select handful of his precious materials each week. Nothing too special, of course; some old Dickens correspondence and a few early drafts by some lesser 19th century authors to start off with, but the promise was there that if things went well, there would be more where that came from. Better, more exciting documents to contribute to the world wide web. 

When first he learned of the partnership, Crowley offered to continue driving Aziraphale to and from the library. But the angel had refused on the grounds that the city of Oxford, with its tiny cobbled streets and lack of Bentley-sized parking spaces, was far better equipped for public transportation. 

“Besides,” Aziraphale had said, under the impression that he was being kind, “what would you do with me in there all day?” 

The truth was, Crowley would probably have done the same thing regardless of whether he was at home in his Mayfair flat or parked outside in the Bentley, which was to say, mope about waiting for Aziraphale to return. Since this was an extremely pathetic answer, Crowley had agreed that he had better ways to spend his time, and that Aziraphale was probably right to opt for public transport. [1]

Following that conversation, Crowley begrudgingly relinquished his last means of control over the angel’s protection. It was difficult, to say the least. Though they’d spent the majority of their six thousand years on earth apart, over the last decade or so Crowley had grown accustomed to being more or less within shouting distance of the other being. Spending an uninterrupted eleven years at the Dowling residence had altered his sense of personal space, to the point where a thirty minute drive by car suddenly seemed an insurmountable distance. And while teleportation was certainly an option, the unfamiliarity of the library’s location and its geographic separation from London made that mode of transportation less predictable, and therein more difficult to rely on. With at least fourteen churches in walking distance of the library, one small miscalculation on his part could mean an accidental arrival on consecrated ground.

Deep down, Crowley knew that he needed to make peace with Aziraphale’s newly regained independence. After all, it wasn’t as though the Bodleian was inherently a dangerous place. The angel had been stationed in war zones before, and had gotten himself mixed up with far worse characters than a greedy bastard of a librarian. Plus, Crowley had to admit that Blackburn, while predatory, was not technically dangerous. At least not when compared to Nazi spies. 

And, bless it all, Aziraphale was _happy._ Apparently he found the archives work rewarding, as he now had the opportunity to benefit and educate untold generations of future humans. Privately, Crowley suspected that the lure of the library itself had just as much to do with Aziraphale’s change of heart. The Bodleian was one of the best stocked facilities in the UK, a virtual tinderbox of ancient manuscripts and special collections a bibliophile like Aziraphale could only ever dream of getting their hands on. Since he couldn’t imagine supervising the archives process was what kept the angel there so many hours out of the day, Crowley had to assume he was using his new proximity to take full advantage of their collection. Still, that didn’t change the fact that he was enjoying himself, and Crowley would rather fall all over again than be the one to take that happiness away from him. 

So Crowley got over himself - for the most part, anyway - and as Aziraphale began spending more and more time at the Bodleian he took to watching the bookshop for him. Purely to keep up appearances and NOT to sell books, as Aziraphale had made abundantly clear. Most humans needed to work to earn a living, the angel had said, and the last thing he wanted was to arouse suspicion by being seen to have abandoned his ‘livelihood.’ Crowley, who had lived the original life of leisure and invented offshore accounts, merely shrugged and agreed to mind the shop.

Truthfully, Crowley didn’t care how Aziraphale justified their new arrangement to himself. He was just happy for the excuse to hang out in Soho, as more often than not they would have dinner together in the evenings after Aziraphale returned from Oxford. Plus - and Crowley would never admit this - it was easier to sense Aziraphale’s grace when he was surrounded by the angel’s things. He felt more in tune with his essence, which he continued to keep tabs on at all times of day, ready to transport at the slightest sign of distress. Not that there ever was any, but Crowley was nothing if not thorough. 

Playing bookseller also allowed Crowley the opportunity to keep an eye on the angel’s belongings. While this hadn’t been a major perk at the time he’d accepted the job, it had soon become an important part of Crowley’s mission. Over the last few months, more than a few items had turned up missing as he’d slogged his way through the bookshop’s inventory, and while Aziraphale had chalked the disappearances up to the constant flux of materials going back and forth between the bookshop and the library, Crowley was not so certain. 

More often than not Aziraphale was gone by the time Crowley arrived to open, so he’d taken to letting himself in and making himself to home. In a typical day Crowley would consume a pot or two of coffee, half-arse a few chores, and then collapse exhausted in front of the TV he’d miracled up, pausing only to make the rounds every so often and scowl menacingly at any customers who happened to get in his way. 

All in all, it was an easy gig. Seeing Aziraphale happy and fulfilled by his work made Crowley happy in turn, and was almost enough to soothe any lingering concerns he may have harbored about the sleazy, good for nothing library director - _almost_ being the operative word here. But at least he wasn’t embarrassing himself by cruising around the Bodleian in his Bentley each day on the off chance the angel required a daring, last-minute demonic rescue. 

Although sometimes Crowley wondered if Aziraphale had asked him to mind the bookshop to prevent him from doing exactly that.

________________

Four months had passed since Aziraphale had begun volunteering his time at the Bodleian. On this particular morning, the front door of the bookshop admitted Crowley as it usually did, swinging open at his touch and closing soundlessly behind him. The demon took all of two steps inside before he froze in the doorway, heartbeat lurching to a stop. 

Something was wrong. 

For as long as he could remember, the bookshop had possessed powerful protective enchantments to keep unpleasant forces at bay. Crowley had had the misfortune of being on the receiving end of their effects a handful of times over the years. Though it couldn't compare with a good old fashioned smiting, on the rare occasion he’d truly managed to piss the angel off, Crowley hadn’t been able to walk within a block’s radius of the shop without extreme discomfort. While on the more mild end of the spectrum, there’d been times in recent memory where the front door hadn’t unlocked for him, purely so that Crowley wouldn’t stumble on Aziraphale in the bath. 

These precautions should have prevented any being, supernatural or otherwise, from entering the establishment without permission. But there was a wound in the shield now, a contrived blind spot. The holy energy that encompassed the entirety of the bookshop had been tampered with and left open to danger. 

On instinct Crowley reached out to feel Aziraphale’s divine essence, sensing for proximity and state of being. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Aziraphale was in Oxford, as he should be, and he was calm. Despite his relief, Crowley did not relax a muscle. 

Still as a statue he scented the air, yellow eyes darting about in the semi-darkness. Nothing moved in the shadows. No sounds could be heard in the silence. With bated breath, Crowley waited for the intruder to reveal themselves, all the while assessing the damage to Aziraphale’s enchantment, unable to keep from tonguing at it like a cut in the mouth. 

After a long, agonizing stretch he heard something - a soft noise, like the scuffing of a shoe coming from the direction of Aziraphale’s back room. Crowley uprooted himself and crept toward the doorway, which had been left slightly ajar. Yellow lamplight flooded the corridor just outside, flickering with shadow as someone - or something - moved within. Slowly, cautiously, Crowley closed the gap and peered inside.

A man stood hunched over a cabinet drawer, rifling through its contents with his back turned. Crowley recognized his scent immediately. It was the same scent Aziraphale carried home after a long day at the Bodleian, the cologne and sweat smell that clung to his clothes and made the demon feel sick. The library director, Blackburn. He should have known.

Old books and loose-leaf parchment littered the floor where he stood. Some of the pages were crumpled and torn, while one bore a dark smudge in the shape of a shoe print. Crowley knew some of Aziraphale’s most precious texts were kept in this room, out from under the prying eyes of customers; his collection of prophetic works, his Bibles, and a few prized first editions at the least. Rage bubbled up inside Crowley’s stomach, setting his blood to boil. The thought that the director might have damaged the angel’s most treasured items made him want to leave a boot-shaped bruise on his fragile human body in retaliation. Reluctantly, Crowley swallowed down the urge, and with practiced calm stepped out of the shadows and into the light. 

“I’m afraid we’re not open yet,” he said, leaning heavily against the door frame. 

With a strangled yelp, Blackburn whirled around, coiling like a spring mid-turn as though preparing for an attack. The sight of Crowley’s lanky, nonthreatening figure on the opposite side of the room appeared to catch him completely off guard. For a moment they stared at one another, wordlessly sizing the other up as the atmosphere crackled with tension. 

“You must be Anthony,” said the man eventually, straightening himself to full height and aiming for casual. “Eugene Blackburn, Oxford University.”

“I know who you are," said Crowley, arms folded across his chest.

“Is that right? Well, Ezra’s told me so much about you.”

“Really?” The demon raised his eyebrows over the tops of his sunglasses. “Did he happen to mention what time we open?”

A forced, humorless chuckle tore its way out of Blackburn's throat. “Oh, I figured I’d stop by early. Beat the rush, you know.”

“Smart man,” said Crowley. He gestured toward the disaster at his feet. “And does Mr. Fell know you’re here now? Rifling through his things?” 

Blackburn’s placid smile took on a fixed quality. “I think you and I both know that what Ezra doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Crowley, struggling to keep the flicker of confusion off his face. _You and I both know,_ Blackburn had said, lumping the two of them together in some obscure way. Crowley hadn’t the slightest idea what that was supposed to mean, but he was not about to show it. If he’d learned anything from his experience masquerading as an angel in Heaven, it was that in situations like these, confidence was everything. 

Sauntering forward into the room, Crowley paused at the desk to yank on a pair of Aziraphale’s white rubber gloves. Blackburn took a single step back as the demon approached, eyebrows drawing together into one dark line. 

“I imagine Mr. Fell would be very hurt to see how you’ve treated his things,” Crowley continued, coming to tower in front of the mess the other had made. He clucked his tongue, knelt, and began gathering the fallen papers into a gentle pile. Blackburn’s eyes bulged in their sockets as he gazed down at him, his mouth twisting with words unspoken. Oblivious to his consternation, Crowley held the paper with the muddy shoe print aloft. “Ah! Would you look at that? Unacceptable. Tell me, Blackburn, is this how you take care of your materials at Oxford?”

“I didn’t exactly have a lot of time,” he uttered through clenched teeth.

“I’d imagine not, what with the breaking and entering.”

The man made no move to deny it. Crowley straightened from his crouch to stare him square in the face, stack of papers clutched in one long-fingered hand. They were practically of a height. Blackburn met his gaze head-on. 

“I think you’d better leave,” said Crowley, his voice soft and dangerous. “Now.”

“Oh, I’m leaving,” growled Blackburn, reaching around Crowley to snatch his briefcase off Aziraphale’s desk. With a final scowl he turned to stalk out of the room, but not before turning to address the demon once more. The next words out of Blackburn’s mouth punched into Crowley like a knife in the gut. 

“Don’t think I don’t know what you are.”

For a fraction of a second Crowley’s lungs ceased to function. Blackburn’s words repeated on loop through his head, smug and secretive; _don’t think I don’t know what you are._ Not _who_ you are - _what_ you are. And what was Crowley, other than a demon? A non-human entity? A monster? 

A flicker of fear lanced through his corporation like flame, and Crowley reached out in his panic to probe Blackburn’s thoughts, unfurling his senses to absorb the human’s subconscious inner monologue, seeking truth, answers, vindication, the meaning behind those words, _whatyouarewhatyouarewhatyouare._

Crowley’s cold reptilian blood turned to ice in his veins. 

There was nothing to hear. 

When humans weren’t thinking anything in particular, their brains were a lot like a TV without a channel, fuzzy, popcorn static. That was not the sensation Crowley was experiencing now, as he struggled to tune into the human’s frequency. The television of Blackburn’s brain was turned off. Unplugged. 

Something was very, very, _very_ wrong. Crowley concentrated harder, the tendrils of his perception slithering around the closed-off dome of the man’s mind, seeking an entrance, a small crack in the walled exterior. There was nothing. 

_Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck._ Alarm bells were clanging off in Crowley’s head. Mental blocks like this were uncommonly rare, and never, in Crowley’s experience, a good thing. For the life of him he couldn’t believe he’d never noticed it before. Not that he’d had a ton of opportunity to notice such a thing, but still, there had been at least two instances where he and Blackburn had come face to face. Shouldn’t he have sensed that something was off about him during those brief encounters? That the man had built a shield around his thoughts like a brick wall?

A million questions spiraled out from one another in his brain, whether the block was unconscious or intentional, temporary or permanent. And if it were conscious, if the director were employing it now specifically to ward Crowley off, how much did he know, and what was he trying to prevent Crowley from learning? 

Through the haze of unanswered questions, Crowley couldn’t help but think how significantly more dangerous this man was than he had ever expected, and how he had unknowingly allowed him to get close to the angel. 

Crowley’s pulse was racing. Blood rushed like thunder in his ears, and his palms broke out in an uncontrolled sweat. He had to do something, and fast. Before this could go any further, before the man could reach Aziraphale and bring him harm. But first, he had to be sure. Completely, unflinchingly sure. There could be no confusion as to what the man had meant. No ambiguity in his statement, no room for guilt or second guessing of any kind if Crowley were going to do what needed to be done.

There was only one thing for it. Crowley grit his teeth, clenched his fist, and slowed time to a crawl. The room bent around them. Light moved in slow, visible waves, like the gently rippling surface of a pool. Blackburn stood completely still, his body half turned toward Crowley, the cold curl of his lip frozen in place as time stretched out infinitely before them. With a deep, frenzied breath, Crowley shut his eyes and summoned a vast quantity of strength from within himself.

Possession was not among Crowley’s favorite demonic interrogation techniques, but it beat out-and-out torture. There were things you couldn’t hide when you shared a body with someone, when you communed with their soul. It was the only way Crowley knew of to get the answers he needed. To be sure how much Blackburn knew, and what he was after. 

But there was always a cost, a price to be paid. Aziraphale had been extremely lucky when he’d inhabited Madame Tracy’s corporation, lucky that Adam had been the one to separate them, for the act was inherently dangerous. There had been cases of possession ripping a person’s soul from their body during the split, leaving nothing but an empty shell behind. Humans could be driven to madness, souls could become fused, trapping a demon within a body. More could go wrong than right, and had, if Crowley’s experience in Gadarenes as a pig had taught him anything. 

Crowley was far too careful for that now, too good at his job, and yet he experienced a cold shiver of fear as he prepared to leave his corporeal form and enter another. 

He didn’t like it. Hated it, in fact. A large part of who he was, who he’d come to think of himself as in the last several thousand years revolved around occupying an essentially human-shaped body. So it was with great reluctance that Crowley left that behind to become a pillar of black smoke, a curling shadow, a dark fog that washed over the human, over and around and between, but not through. 

Even in his true form, unencumbered by physical limitation, Crowley could not penetrate the man’s defenses. His push was met with resistance, like trying to walk through a wall of solid glass. Crowley struggled until he’d exhausted every avenue, and himself in the process. 

Utterly defeated, Crowley retreated back into his awaiting body. It was like coming home at the end of a long day, like crawling in between silk sheets. But the relief of the sensation was diminished by the knowledge that he had failed to learn anything, that he had risked it all and come back empty handed. 

With the remaining strength he had, Crowley signaled for time to resume its normal passage. Completely unaware of all that had transpired, Blackburn nodded a curt farewell in his direction and disappeared from the room. It was all Crowley could do to stay standing. A moment later the bell chimed in the front of the shop, and Crowley knew that he was gone. 

Alone and weak, Crowley slumped against the cabinet at his back and slid to the floor, surrounded by the scattered evidence of Blackburn’s search. He needed to move. To act, before things could escalate any further. But he was so, so tired. With a long, shuddering breath, Crowley reached for the familiar comfort of Aziraphale’s grace, put his head between his knees and closed his eyes. He would rest for a moment. 

And then he would begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Secretly, Crowley cursed the city of Oxford for its lack of adequate parking and made a mental note that if he were ever to involve himself in demonic transport development again, the first thing he’d do would be to build a massive motorway right through the whole blessed town.


	4. Chapter 4

Time passed. Seconds, minutes, maybe hours, during which Crowley was aware of nothing, drifting in a sort of semi-conscious state. Exhaustion seeped into every fiber of his being on both this plane and the next, and yet he fought the urge to sleep, forcing his body to stay awake for the sole purpose of monitoring Aziraphale at a distance. 

His mounting anxiety did not allow him to sit still for long. The murkiness of his thoughts soon flooded with niggling hypotheticals and worst-case-scenarios, all clamoring for attention at the forefront of his mind. Desperately, Crowley pushed them down and tried to concentrate on one thing at a time. 

He was angry. Beyond angry, he was _furious._ Furious with himself for allowing something like this to happen in the first place, for allowing a stranger to break into the shop and damage Aziraphale’s possessions. Furious that he hadn’t been able to penetrate Blackburn’s defenses, and that he’d sacrificed some basic principles to do so. But mostly, Crowley was furious with Blackburn, and he focused all his remaining energy on channeling that rage away from himself and onto the human. 

If he even _was_ a human. Blackburn had already proven himself capable of blocking his thoughts and body from outside invasion, so who was to say he wasn’t just masking his energy as well, confusing Crowley’s senses into believing him to be of Adam’s original stock? At this point Crowley couldn’t rule anything out. He had to be prepared for every possibility. 

It was now abundantly clear that Blackburn had purposefully sought Aziraphale out so that he might gain access to the bookshop, but what he wanted with a bunch of old Bibles remained to be seen. And while Aziraphale’s collection was undoubtedly impressive, was it merely coincidence that he had stumbled across the only rare book dealer in the world who also happened to be an angel? Blackburn had claimed to know the truth about Crowley, so who was to say he wasn’t also aware of Aziraphale’s inhumanity? Perhaps the breaking and entering were merely a smokescreen, and his true goal was to get close enough to the angel to bring him harm. 

All this ambiguity only served to fuel the flames of Crowley’s anger. He could have sat there and stewed with it indefinitely, hell-bent on puzzling out the depths of the mystery behind Blackburn’s hidden identity and what he wanted from Aziraphale. But stronger than all that fury was the fear, and in the end it was the fear that kept Crowley awake and spurred him back into action. 

At great length he rose to his feet, using the aid of the cabinet behind him to drag his body upward. The damaged papers he’d gathered earlier were still clutched in one vice-like hand. With great care, Crowley placed them in a pile on the desk before setting to work on the rest of the fallen documents. Some of the items appeared to have escaped the assault with little to no injury, while others bore scuff marks and tattered pages that definitely had not been there before. Crowley set everything aside for Aziraphale to examine later before closing the gutted drawers of the filing cabinets and leaning heavily back against them. 

He spared the room a final sweeping glance. Other than the new piles on the desk, it more or less resembled its usual cluttered state. It would have to suffice for now; though he didn’t fancy the idea of the angel coming back to a ransacked bookshop, his real priority had to be Aziraphale himself. 

Crowley’s first instinct was to transport to his side, yet he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was incapable of extending himself at that moment - not with any degree of accuracy at least. Still, he couldn’t very well leave Aziraphale alone any longer, blissfully unaware of the danger lurking beside him and vulnerable to attack. Crowley had to retrieve him. The sooner the better. 

Decisively, Crowley whipped out his mobile and pressed the call button, willing the line to connect with whichever telephone was closest to the angel at that moment. After two short rings it picked up. 

_“Archives, this is Carrie.”_

“Put Mr. Fell on the phone.”

There was a pause. 

_“I’m sorry, may I ask who’s calling?”_

“It’s - ” He raked a frustrated hand through his hair. “Tell him it’s Crowley.” 

Apparently this meant something to the woman, because the next moment she said, _“Oh, Mr. Crowley! One moment, let me just go find him.”_ The line clicked, and soft, tinkling piano music filled his ear. One minute turned into two, then five. Crowley ground his teeth and fought down the panic that threatened to engulf him like a wave.

Abruptly, the music ceased and was replaced by the angel’s voice, tinged with concern.

_“Crowley?”_

“Aziraphale.” Crowley couldn’t entirely keep the tension from bleeding into his tone. “I’m coming to get you.”

_“What? Why? Has something happened?”_

There was no time to explain. 

“Thirty minutes,” Crowley growled, and hung up the phone. 

_______________

Half an hour later and Crowley was pulling into the same emergency services parking space he’d used the last time he’d been to the Bodleian. The campus was bustling with activity. It had snowed the day before, and pedestrians walked the streets in groups of twos and threes, bundled up against the chill and clinging to one another to avoid slipping on the ice. Crowley cranked the Bentley’s heat to max and stared pensively toward the double doors of the library. 

There was no sign of Aziraphale. Crowley’s patience lasted about thirty seconds, and then he climbed out of the car and started a brisk walk toward the library, unconscious of the ice underfoot. The milling crowd gave him a wide berth, allowing him to cross the courtyard and reach the entrance in record time. 

A burst of warm air greeted him as he thrust open the heavy doors and stepped inside. The interior of the building was only slightly different than Crowley remembered, but even three hundred years ago the design had never been to his taste. Everything was made of dark wood, which somehow managed to make a place as spacious as a library appear small and cramped. 

There was an unmarked door down a nearby corridor. Crowley strolled through it purposefully and found himself in the back offices, where not a single soul glanced up at his unexpected entrance. Rather than ask for assistance, he took it upon himself to flit from door to door, watching and listening for signs of his missing companion. 

At length he heard Aziraphale’s voice and his heart began to race. Walking faster, he followed the sound to a conference room almost as cluttered as the bookshop, though distinctly more organized. The angel stood with his back to the door, talking to a pair of women as he tucked a pale blue scarf around his neck. Even with Aziraphale in his sights, Crowley did not allow himself to relax. Not yet. 

“I’m just so sorry to leave you with all this work right before the holiday,” Aziraphale was saying, pulling on a pair of luxurious, cream-colored mittens.

“Don’t be,” cooed one of the women, laying a sympathetic hand on his arm. “Family is far more important.” 

“Exactly. The books will be here when you get back,” added the other.

From the doorway, Crowley cleared his throat. The conversation abruptly broke off and the group turned to stare at him - or gawk, in the case of the unfamiliar humans. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale exhaled, blue eyes round with surprise.

“Time to go, angel,” Crowley said bluntly, and he turned and headed back in the direction he had come. A moment later he heard the sound of jogging footsteps behind him and slowed to allow the angel to catch up. 

“That was rather rude, you know,” Aziraphale puffed, once they’d gained the privacy of the courtyard. “You could have at least introduced yourself.”

“Did you want me to introduce myself?” Crowley muttered rhetorically, picking up the pace. He had not dressed for the cold, and his extremities were starting to go numb.

Aziraphale didn’t answer, and they completed the rest of the walk in silence. Dimly, Crowley wondered how Aziraphale might have introduced him if given the chance, and whether or not the woman had been referring to Crowley when she’d mentioned Aziraphale’s ‘family.’ He hadn’t the emotional bandwidth to think about it now, but filed the encounter away for later reflection. 

A ticket was waiting for them on the front windshield of the Bentley. Normally, Crowley would have incinerated it with a glance, but at that moment his reservoir of demonic power was quite empty, and he settled for crumpling it up as Aziraphale ducked into the passenger seat. 

As soon as the driver’s side door was closed behind him a wave of relief washed over Crowley so powerful he had to close his eyes. Aziraphale was here. He was alive. He was _safe._ Unbidden, his fingers twitched across the center console, seeking to grasp, to hold, to place his hand as casually on Aziraphale’s arm as that woman had done in the library, but he stilled his progress at the last moment and made a fist. 

“Well, I’m here,” Aziraphale said, shucking off his mittens in a fussy, irritated fashion. “Now, would you mind telling me what was so urgent that you had to come all the way out here and interrupt me in the middle of a work day?” 

Crowley didn’t trust himself to answer. As the silence stretched on Aziraphale turned to look at him, truly examining his face for the first time since they’d reunited. All traces of annoyance disappeared, replaced by deep worry lines that crinkled near his eyes and mouth. “Crowley? My dear, what’s wrong?”

“We have to go,” Crowley managed to say, and he made to start the car. In a flash, Aziraphale’s hand darted out and snatched the keys from his grasp. 

“Crowley, _answer me._ ” 

Crowley pressed his lips together into a hard line. He’d spent the entire drive in a war with himself over what to say, how to explain to the angel all that had transpired in the last few hours. There was a part of him that absolutely hated lying to Aziraphale, that took one look at secreted information and wanted to heave it out onto the floor between them, ugly and terrible but at the very least seen. 

But if time had taught him anything, it was that Aziraphale did not always believe him, nor did he always take his side. There was no telling how he would react should Crowley admit the whole truth, particularly the details of his botched attempt at possessing a man Aziraphale had come to consider a friend. Still, he had to tell him something. 

Crowley polished his glasses on his shirt to give himself time to think. “Okay, don’t panic,” he began, turning his body in the seat to face Aziraphale. Aziraphale’s face immediately twisted with alarm. “I said don’t panic!”

“Well, when you begin a sentence with ‘don’t panic’ it’s a little hard not to!” Aziraphale cried. “Now, would you please just spit it out!”

Reluctantly, Crowley replaced his glasses, swallowed the lump in his throat and voiced the dreaded words aloud. 

“Someone broke into the bookshop.”

He couldn’t bring himself to look at Aziraphale’s face as he processed this information, knowing only too well the devastation he would see there. For a long time the only sound to be heard was the blasting of the Bentley’s modern, in-dash heater, which roared steadily despite the engine being off. When the angel finally spoke he sounded very far away.

“Was anything taken?” 

Crowley shook his head in uncertainty. “Dunno. Didn’t have time to properly comb through everything. Wanted to let you know as soon as possible.” He hesitated. “Aziraphale, I’m so sorry.” 

Aziraphale said nothing. After a moment Crowley felt a nudge against his hand and looked down to see the car keys being pushed back into his grasp. Wordlessly, he accepted them and started the car.

The drive back to London was slower than usual, both as a courtesy to Aziraphale and a reprieve to Crowley’s diminished reflexes. They did not speak for the duration of the ride, though Crowley threw the occasional sidelong glance at the angel to ensure he was still keeping it together. Strangely, he felt Aziraphale doing the same to him.

A long hour later Crowley guided the Bentley toward the curb in front of the bookshop and killed the engine. From the outside, the building looked perfectly normal, the same dingy brick and peeling paint it had borne for the last two hundred years. Aziraphale hastily exited the car and walked toward the door while Crowley hung back. The moment the angel stepped over the threshold he gasped, one hand flying to clutch his chest. 

_“Oh.”_

The broken shield. 

“I’m sorry,” said Crowley, hovering just behind him. “I wanted to fix it, but I didn’t think… demon, you know. Holy energy. Might’ve just made things worse.”

Aziraphale nodded. His eyes were closed, his brow furrowed in concentration. 

“There’s something else,” Aziraphale said after a moment. “Something… not mine. It’s quite strong.”

Crowley cleared his throat. “That would be me. Before I left to get you I er, put a little something up. Didn’t want to leave the shop defenseless. I can take it down if you like.”

“No.” Aziraphale opened his eyes to look at him, his voice firm. “Please. Not right now, anyway.”

“Suit yourself.” 

Any moment now Crowley expected to feel Aziraphale’s energy repair the damaged ward. He was ready for it, braced against the onslaught of heavenly force, but nothing came. Instead, the angel cast a hesitant eye around the shop, as though searching for evidence of the intruder. 

“Where…?” 

“Follow me,” said Crowley grimly, and he lead him toward the back room. “On the desk.”

Aziraphale entered first. Crowley lingered in the doorway and watched as he slowly approached the piles, his face ghostly white. A trembling hand reached out to touch one of the documents but drew back sharply before it could make contact. 

Silently, Crowley padded to his side and offered the box of gloves. Aziraphale took a pair and slipped them on and Crowley retreated to allow the angel space to go through his damaged possessions. 

A long time passed. Items were examined, set aside and re-examined. Aziraphale made almost no noise apart from the rustling of paper and the turning of pages. Unable to bear the silence a moment longer, Crowley spoke up, his voice overloud in the quiet. 

“Is anything missing?” 

“I don’t know. I’ll have to look through the rest of the cabinets to be sure. But yes. I think so.” With a tired, broken sigh Aziraphale set down the document he had been looking at and focused his attention on Crowley. “What _happened_ here?” 

“I wish I could tell you,” Crowley answered honestly. “The first thing I noticed when I arrived this morning was the damaged shield.” Pinned under Aziraphale’s scrutiny, Crowley felt his knees begin to tremble. He feigned a convincing slouch against the wall, but something in his posture must have given him away, because the next moment Aziraphale’s eyes had narrowed in concern and he was asking:

“Are you alright? Do you want to sit down?”

Crowley shook his head. 

“Really, my dear, you look dead on your feet.” 

“M’fine.”

Aziraphale huffed skeptically and snapped his fingers. An armchair materialized behind Crowley, sliding forward on the floorboards and knocking his knees out from under him. With a surprised _oof!_ he collapsed backwards into it to gaze dazedly upward at the ceiling. The chair was delightfully soft and warm, molded perfectly to the shape of his body. He heard the click of Aziraphale’s shoes approach and couldn’t remember having closed his eyes.

“Sorry,” he croaked, trying and failing to wave him off. “The ward. Took a lot out of me.”

“You needn’t have extended yourself,” Aziraphale murmured from nearby. “Though, do not mistake me, I am grateful.” 

Crowley heard the creak of springs and assumed Aziraphale had just sat opposite him in his desk chair. Reluctantly, he forced his eyes to open and focus on the angel’s face. Much of his earlier sadness was gone, replaced by something like concern and - fear? 

Aziraphale pressed his fingertips to his temples and closed his eyes, clearly thinking. “I just don’t understand why they would have done this. After all this time. Why now?”

Crowley blinked sluggishly in the wake of Aziraphale’s train of thought. “Who?”

“Heaven,” Aziraphale breathed, spreading his hands as though the answer were obvious. “Or, well, I suppose Hell could have been behind it, but it doesn’t make sense for them to go after me. I was never under their jurisdiction in the first place. Though I do suppose they’ve every right to be angry with me as well.”

“Hang on.” Crowley struggled to sit up from his sprawl in the armchair. “You think _Heaven_ commanded some operatives to break into your bookshop?”

“Or Hell,” Aziraphale corrected dimly. He heaved a sigh. “I just wish I knew what it meant.”

Crowley reached under his sunglasses to press on his eyes. In all the scenarios his frazzled mind had come up with, he had never expected Aziraphale to jump to the conclusion that their former employers were behind the break in. And yet, now that he had, it seemed obvious. As far as the angel was concerned, Heaven and Hell were the only enemies either of them had worth worrying about. In fact, Heaven and Hell were probably the only enemies Aziraphale had, _period._ He would have no reason to expect some ordinary pissant human, ney, a _friend,_ of such treachery as this. 

Crowley let out a frustrated groan. No matter how difficult it was to admit, he couldn’t let the angel go on believing that the forces of Heaven and Hell were after them. The situation was bad, certainly, but it wasn’t _that_ bad.

“Aziraphale…” Crowley took a deep breath and braced himself for an argument. “It wasn’t them.”

“Who?”

“Heaven - or Hell, for that matter. It wasn’t them. They didn’t do this.” 

Aziraphale’s eyebrows drew together in a frown. “What do you mean? How can you possibly know that?”

“Because - “ Crowley grit his teeth as the truth bubbled up in his throat, his nails digging hard into the arms of the chair. “Because I walked in on the culprit. Caught them in the fucking act.”

At these words, Aziraphale visibly recoiled. “You _what?_ Are - Are you saying you know who’s responsible? And you didn’t say anything earlier?” Crowley forced a nod. “Why?”

“Because I didn’t think you’d like the answer.” 

“Well, of course I won’t _like_ it,” Aziraphale exclaimed, flinging his hands up in the air. He rose to his feet and began to pace. “But I have to know, don’t I? So, who was it?”

Crowley’s posture was rigid. He set his jaw, looked the angel square in the eye and answered. “Blackburn.”

Aziraphale’s footsteps slowed. Stopped. Crowley watched the clouds roll over his eyes and felt his stomach pool with dread. 

“Oh, but you must be mistaken.”

“Mistaken?” Crowley hissed in a breath. “How on earth could I be mistaken?”

“Perhaps you misunderstood. Perhaps he just came by to return some books, and it was _he_ who encountered the burglar, and you only _thought_ it was him. Wrong place at the wrong time.”

“I caught him in the fucking act, angel. Walked in on him right in the middle of it, rooting through your drawers, stepping all over your precious papers. It was him, I’m sure of it.”

“That’s simply not possible.”

“Not possible?!” Crowley tore his glasses off in earnest and cast them aside. “Compare the bloody shoe prints if you like! I know what I saw!”

“But, my dear, the shield,” Aziraphale said reasonably, as though he’d found a loophole in Crowley’s argument. “He’s just a human. He simply couldn’t have broken it.” 

“He could have,” Crowley muttered darkly. 

Aziraphale arched a brow. "What's that supposed to mean?”

_Oh no._ The words had slipped out of their own accord. Crowley squirmed uncomfortably in his seat as he tried to come up with a suitable explanation on the spot. “Just that - well, we don’t really know what he’s capable of.” 

“Capable of? Why should he be capable of anything?”

“It - I - You - I mean - “ Crowley let out a groan of frustration. It was like his brain had disconnected from his mouth. He tried again. “You haven’t noticed anything - anything _strange_ about him? A bad vibe?”

“A bad vibe?”

“You know, like he’s hiding something.”

“Obviously not, or I would have said something,” said Aziraphale icily. “Why? Have you?” 

“Ngh. That’s. I - fuck, I don’t know. Maybe.” Crowley scrubbed a hand furiously through his hair, attempting to organize his thoughts. “There’s just. Something not right about him. Something bad, Aziraphale, I can _feel_ it.”

“What are you saying, that he’s demonic?”

Crowley didn’t answer. Aziraphale scoffed, clearly offended.

“Really, my dear, I’m not so incompetent as not to recognize a demon sitting right in front of me.” He paused to gesture sharply in Crowley’s direction. “I have been thwarting them since the beginning. And I assure you, I haven’t detected anything alarming from Eugene in all these months.” 

_Because he’s blocking you,_ Crowley wanted to scream, but Aziraphale continued talking uninterrupted. “Don’t you trust my judgement?”

“Yes,” said Crowley automatically, biting back the urge to throw the question back in his face. _Don’t you trust MINE?_ “But do you think - “ he started and stopped, cutting himself off to repeat through clenched teeth. “Do you think it’s possible that your _affection_ for the human might be clouding your judgement?”

“I’m not sure I’m following you.”

“I just - I know how attached you get.” _Don’t say Oscar Wilde. Don’t say Oscar Wilde._ “How you’ve gotten in the past.”

Aziraphale stopped pacing for a moment to fix him with a look. “We live among the humans, Crowley. We interact with them every day. It’s inevitable that we’ll meet some that we connect with. Don’t you agree?”

Crowley, who had stopped forging meaningful human connections a long time ago, merely shrugged tightly. In his professional opinion, keeping humans as friends was a lot like keeping caterpillars as pets. Interesting to watch for awhile, but gone in the blink of an eye, leaving nothing but the husk of their body, the cocoon left behind while their soul fluttered on to either Heaven or Hell. There had been a handful of times in the beginning where he’d followed a family, latching onto the descendants for the comfort of a familiar feature, a strong chin or stick out ears or a crooked smile. But eventually the line would become too far flung, or die out entirely, which was somehow much worse than the death of a single person. So he abstained, for the most part. 

“I know you have had human companions, Crowley. You can’t be upset with me for having mine."

“Yeah,” said Crowley bitterly. “But the difference is, I’d trust you before I trusted any one of them. If our roles were reversed right now, _I’d believe you._ ”

At that Aziraphale fell silent. A bit of the holy fire died down behind his eyes as he made a slow circuit around his desk chair and sat back down. 

“I _do_ believe you,” he said after a moment, leaning forward as though to demonstrate his sincerity. “I just don’t think we have the full story yet. And before we set out on this witch hunt I’d like to ask Eugene about it. It seems only fair we know his version of events before we start throwing around outrageous accusations.”

Crowley bit his tongue so hard it bled. “Right,” he said flatly. 

“Good.” Aziraphale leaned back in his chair with finality, as though they’d reached some sort of agreement. “I’m meant to be having dinner with him tonight, so I’ll ask him then.”

“You _what_ \- “

“And I don’t want to hear any guff about it!” Aziraphale cut him off, meeting his stricken, pleading gaze with cool stubbornness. Crowley gaped at him, opening and closing his mouth like a fish for several seconds before he regained some semblance of composure. 

“Fine,” he said. “Fine. That’s - yep. Fine.” With a tremendous amount of effort Crowley shoved himself to his feet in a way he hoped appeared lithe and unaffected. “I’ll jussst leave you to it, then, shall I?”

“You’re leaving?” Aziraphale asked, surprised. 

“Probably for the best, don’t you think? Don’t want to be here when _Eugene_ arrivesss.” Crowley’s tongue curled around the name like a curse. 

“Oh.” Aziraphale had the gall to look disappointed. “I guess not. Yes, I suppose you’d better go, then. At any rate it’ll give me time to go over the rest of these piles before he gets here. See if anything is actually missing.” 

“Great.” With a snap of his fingers Crowley miracled his discarded sunglasses back onto his face. The small amount of effort it took shot a bolt of pain through his body from head to toe. He hid the grimace on his face by turning for the door and waving vaguely over his shoulder. “See you later.”

Aziraphale called after him. 

“Will I? See you later, that is?”

Crowley stopped in his tracks. Reluctantly he glanced back at Aziraphale, sitting among his damaged possessions and looking very much alone. He hesitated. A part of Crowley longed to stay, for whatever comfort his demonic presence could afford the angel in a time like this. But there were things that needed doing, the sooner the better, and he could not waste any more time trying to reason with a being who had spent the last six thousand years proving himself to be unreasonable. 

“Yeah, you will,” Crowley sighed, letting a trace amount of affection seep into his tone. It sounded strangely like defeat. “I won’t go far.”

With that said, Crowley left the backroom behind and stalked out to the Bentley. As the door to the bookshop closed behind him a ripple of energy pass through the atmosphere; Aziraphale fortifying the ward. Crowley caught the tail end of it and experienced a brief moment of searing, white-hot pain that blinked out as quickly as it had come. Momentarily doubled over, Crowley took deep, steadying breaths and tried not to vomit onto the pavement. 

Eventually he straightened and wobbled over to the car, collapsing into the driver’s side and shutting the door behind him. For a long time he sat there, gripping the steering wheel and taking harsh, whistling breaths through his nose. Then he pulled out his mobile, and for the second time that day willed it to connect on the other line. 

The first ring cut off abruptly and a voice spoke, hard and clear. 

_“Hello?”_

“It’s me,” said Crowley grimly. “We need to talk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [walkwithursus](https://walkwithursus.tumblr.com/) on tumblr


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the slow update speed. Please enjoy this extra long chapter as a sign of my gratitude!

Crowley arranged to meet his contact at a cafe around the block from Aziraphale’s bookshop. It was a small, boutique little place that changed hands frequently, though the current owners seemed to be doing quite well (undoubtedly due to the fact that Aziraphale enjoyed their unique pastries). Crowley swept in with a gust of cold air and commandeered the only window table, a vantage point that allowed him a good view of the entire cafe as well as the street outside.

As soon as he sat down, Crowley whipped out his mobile and began cashing in favors with the few remaining contacts he had left in Hell. The list was sparse. While the legions of the damned were certainly put out about the failed attempt at a second war, it was the destruction of Ligur that really seemed to have cast him out of their bad graces. The handful of demons and denizens still willing to speak to him did so in a pandering way, as though by doing so they were hoping to avoid a five gallon bucket of holy water to the head the next time Crowley went off the rails.

Crowley hardly cared. He phrased his inquiries carefully, reluctant to reveal too much information lest he attract unwanted attention toward himself. But from what he could gather, no one had heard anything about a new field agent in London. As far as Hell was concerned, following Crowley’s little stunt in the bathtub, the entirety of the UK was pretty much a no-go zone, requiring special permission to enter. While this information was reassuring in an off-hand sort of way, it did nothing to answer the questions currently burning in his mind as to who Blackburn was and what he was doing in Aziraphale’s life. Crowley sagged in his seat as the hours ticked past, hanging up on dead end after dead end, pausing only to refill his coffee cup and glare impatiently out the window. 

The sun was already setting by the time the black cab pulled up outside, idly chugging exhaust into the frigid grey air. Though its occupant was invisible through the dark tinted windows, Crowley was certain this was the cab he’d been waiting for. Abandoning his coffee, Crowley sped out the front door and over to the driver’s side window, where he paid the cabbie off with the swipe of a slate grey card. 

“Thanks for coming,” Crowley said, as the passenger exited the car and stood beside him on treaded winter boots. The cab sped away along the icy road, tires churning muddy slush. He gestured back toward the warmly lit cafe. “Shall we?” 

Anathema gave a curt nod, and they entered and sat down opposite one another at the window seat. Crowley quickly reclaimed his abandoned cup of coffee and relished in the warmth running through his fingers. Anathema placed a heavy plaid carpet bag between them on the table and waited for Crowley to speak. 

“Can I get you anything?” He asked, for courtesy’s sake. 

“No, thank you,” she said stiffly. “Let’s just get started.”

Despite the near-permanent knot of anxiety in his stomach, Crowley offered a grim smile. He knew he had made the right call bringing her in on this. Since the events of the failed apocalypse last summer, Anathema Device had proven herself a reliable contact in Crowley’s efforts to stay one step ahead of his former employer, in particular when it came to the young antichrist. Though Adam Young may have rejected his power, there was no telling what the boy would be capable of in the future, particularly should Heaven or Hell take it upon themselves to reach out at a later date. Therefore, it had seemed prudent that Crowley continue to keep an indirect eye on him after he’d taken his leave of Tadfield.

Anathema Device was that indirect eye. Living in the same village and already having an established connection with the boy, she had spent the last year funneling information to Crowley via the occasional call or text. Not that there had been much to say; other than a few minor eyebrow-raising incidents (Adam being allowed a second dog, for example), there had been no signs of anything out of the ordinary in the quiet English village.

Through these occasional conversations with Anathema (and a multitude of conversations with Aziraphale), Crowley had gathered that she was an occultist, and the direct descendant of Agnes Nutter, infamous author of the most nice and accurate book of prophecies to date. So not only was she useful and preternaturally gifted, which in Crowley’s book made her exceedingly valuable, the girl was trustworthy and eager to help. These details were all Crowley really needed to know when it came time to bring her into the fold. Which, incidentally, was now. 

“Right. We don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll make this quick,” said Crowley, throwing an emphatic glance at his wristwatch. “Do you remember the man I was with on the airbase that day in Tadfield?”

“Vaguely,” Anathema replied, narrowing her eyes. “Why?”

“Well, I can’t be entirely certain, but I think he’s in trouble. And if he’s in trouble, we’re all in trouble. You, me, humanity. All of us.” 

“Why would his being in trouble mean trouble for the rest of us?” 

A perceptive question. Crowley thought fast. 

“You’re talking about the only other being on this planet besides myself with a vested interest in protecting it,” he replied, throwing a glance over his shoulder and leaning ever so slightly forward. “If something were to happen to him, if he were to be compromised in some way, what do you think would happen to the rest of us? To humanity as a whole? I don’t know how much you remember, but Aziraphale did most of the talking back at that airbase. I’d hate to imagine what would’ve happened if he hadn’t been there, and I’d certainly hate to imagine what could happen in the future with him out of the picture.”

Anathema arched an eyebrow. “So, what, you think there’s some sort of conspiracy to dispatch him and restart Armageddon?”

Crowley shook his head. “I don’t know about all that, but whatever’s going on, it’s not good. Not for him, not for anyone.”

Anathema mulled this over, pulling her bag just a little bit closer across the table. At length she asked, “So where do I fit in? You know there are no more prophecies left.”

“I know. That’s not why you’re here. Although, I guess indirectly it is. Your ancestor, Agnes Nutter, the last true witch of England. She passed down some abilities to you, did she not?”

“I can’t see the future, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No, no. As useful as that undoubtedly would be, it wouldn’t help us here. At least, I don’t think it would.”

Anathema visibly relaxed. “Okay, so what then?”

Crowley hesitated before voicing the next part aloud. “Do you think you could recognize another witch if you were to see one?”

“Your friend is being targeted by a witch?”

Crowley shook his head hastily. “Not sure what he is yet. That’s only one possibility. All I know is this man - name of Blackburn - something’s not right about him. He’s capable of things no human should be capable of. And if I’m not mistaken, he’s been mucking about in Aziraphale’s life for awhile now, causing all sorts of problems.”

Anathema nodded as she processed this. “So what do you need me to do?”

Here, Crowley shrugged. After the disastrous fourteenth century, he had fallen out of the habit of hanging around witches. These modern counterparts were an entirely new animal to him. “What _can_ you do?”

“Lots of things,” Anathema replied, brightening. “I can read leylines. Catoptromancy, which is using a mirror to divine a person or place. Seeing people’s auras - “

“That.” Crowley gesticulated. “That one, yes. Seeing people’s auras. That’ll work.”

“So you want me to look at this guy’s aura and… then what?”

“Just tell me what you see. Does it look normal, is there something off about it, that sort of thing. Can you do that much?”

“I think so. But,” Anathema frowned ever so slightly. “Look, if you don’t mind me asking, why me?”

“Let’s just say I’ve had a stroke of bad luck when it comes to this guy.” Crowley said simply. “Besides, I’ve always found humans are best at puzzling out other humans. And it’s very important that we find out whether or not he is, in fact, human.”

That said, Crowley glanced at his watch. 

“We need to go,” he said abruptly, pushing to his feet with a loud scrape of the chair legs. Anathema stood as well, grabbing her bag before following him out of the cafe and onto the street. Crowley opened the passenger door of the Bentley for her. She paused beside it, looking instantly queasy.

“Do you still drive like a maniac?” She asked with a hollow laugh. 

“Just get in,” Crowley said impatiently, closing the door behind her and slipping around to the driver’s side. The radio flared to life midway through a Queen track. 

“Wait. There’s no seatbelt,” Anathema said, craning her neck around as though she might have missed it. Aziraphale usually miracled his own. 

“You don’t need one,” Crowley growled, and he stepped on the gas. 

It was a quick circle to the bookshop. Anathema kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut for the short duration of the ride, only opening them once Crowley had parked the Bentley behind an idling delivery van across the street and killed the engine. A faint yellow glow shone through the dingy windows of the shop; Aziraphale had not left yet. 

“What are we doing?” Anathema asked, attempting to look in the same direction as Crowley. Apparently it was difficult to tell where his line of sight landed with sunglasses on. 

“Waiting,” he said, tightening his grip around the steering wheel. 

Anathema gave him a sharp look but didn’t ask any further questions, for which he was grateful. No more than five minutes later, a silver sedan pulled up in front of the bookshop and parallel parked against the curb. Crowley’s lip curled back as Blackburn exited the car and strolled to the front door, dressed in a neat, dark grey suit. The sound of his knuckles rapping on the wood struck Crowley’s ears like a gong. A moment later the lights flicked off inside the bookshop and Aziraphale appeared in the doorway. 

“He’s not going inside,” Crowley muttered, leaning forward in his seat.

Anathema raised an eyebrow. “Is that important?”

“Maybe.”

After a few seconds of chitchat, the pair walked to Blackburn’s waiting car and climbed in. The taillights glowed red like a pair of evil eyes, and quick as a flash the Bentley’s engine roared to life.

“Show time,” Crowley muttered, and he pulled out into traffic. 

It was not the dangerous, heart-attack-inducing car chase of Crowley’s fantasies, much to Anathema’s apparent relief. They tailed the sedan at a discrete distance through the lamp-lit streets of London, keeping a few car-lengths apart as a precautionary measure. The Bentley was too recognizable for its own good. The last thing they needed now was to be spotted in a rearview mirror and have the entire mission compromised before it had even begun. 

Twenty long, agonizing minutes later they pulled up outside the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel, where Crowley guessed they would be heading to The Gilbert Scott. Blackburn gave his keys to the valet, while Crowley opted to park the Bentley himself in the underground garage, if only to give Blackburn and Aziraphale time to grab a seat before he and Anathema entered. The walk from the car park up to the restaurant was tense. Anathema struggled to match Crowley’s long-legged pace. 

“When we get inside, we need to be completely invisible. Inconspicuous,” Crowley said under his breath. 

“Good thing you said that,” Anathema muttered, with the tonal equivalence of an eye-roll. The salted pavement crunched under her shoes. “Cause I was planning on waltzing right up and introducing myself.”

“Well, don’t,” said Crowley, pointedly ignoring her sarcasm. As its inventor, he felt he’d earned the right. They reached the heavy wooden door, which Crowley held open for her. “After you.” 

The inside of the restaurant was quite a bit larger than Crowley had expected. The vaulted ceilings were made up of exposed beam interspersed with gold filigree. Anathema whistled under her breath beside him, intimidated. 

“I think I’m underdressed,” she murmured, gesturing down at her clothes. She had dressed for warmth and efficiency, which unfortunately did not translate to fine dining. 

“No one will notice,” Crowley said simply, as a collar and buttons materialized on his own shirt. 

A table for two was miraculously available, and they were quickly ushered past the host podium and into the large dining area. Crowley scanned the room for the table where Aziraphale and Blackburn had been seated and spotted them almost immediately.

Their table, no doubt chosen by Aziraphale, was stationed in a small, private alcove near the back of the restaurant. Crowley subliminally directed the host to seat he and Anathema across the restaurant at the top of a small balcony, where they would have a bird’s eye view of the pair while remaining relatively hidden themselves. As an extra precaution, Crowley miracled the nearest potted plant a few feet to the left to provide extra cover. 

“You should take your sunglasses off now that we’re inside,” Anathema said as she settled into her seat. “They draw too much attention.” Crowley peered skeptically at her over the tops of them, and she pressed her lips together into a hard line. “... Nevermind.” Gently, she unfolded her napkin and placed it in her lap before clearing her throat. “Do you see them?” She asked under her breath, opening her menu. 

“Left of the bar. Near the oil painting,” Crowley answered.

Dark eyes scanned the dining room below, face angled subtly away. “I don’t… Wait, there. I see them now.” 

Crowley nodded absently, barely aware of what Anathema had said. Aziraphale’s back was to him. Though Crowley fancied himself an expert at reading the angel’s body language, he still yearned to see his face. Instead, he had an eyeful of Blackburn’s smug countenance, chuckling at something Aziraphale had said - or more likely, something Blackburn himself had said, Aziraphale’s sense of humor being an acquired taste. Crowley strained his ears to hear over the din of the restaurant, attempting to tune out the scrape of cutlery, the chewing of mouths, and the drone of one hundred conversations to pick the two of them out of the crowd. He couldn’t. 

Something flat tapped against his curled fist. Crowley tore his eyes away from Aziraphale long enough to watch Anathema attempt to wedge a menu into his hand.

“What happened to keeping up appearances?” She hissed. 

“I am. We are,” Crowley protested, opening the menu and scanning the selections without seeing. 

A waiter appeared a short while later and Crowley rattled off the name of a decent vintage on the wine list. As soon as the man had vanished he leaned forward in his seat to whisper across the table.

“Well?”

“I know,” Anathema replied, her eyes focused on the angel’s table. “I’m trying.” 

A few minutes elapsed, during which Crowley’s leg bounced audibly under the table. Anathema let out a frustrated sigh and slumped backwards into her seat. 

“I can’t get a fix on him,” she complained, closing her eyes and rubbing her temples with two fingers. “Your friend is eclipsing his aura.”

Crowley gave a rare, mystified blink. “What does that mean?” 

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like, his aura is so strong everything else just pales in comparison. Like stars trying to shine during sunlight. No effect.”

“Why’s it doing that?”

“I don’t think it’s on purpose. And it’s not just Blackburn’s. It’s everyone - everyone in his vicinity. I can’t detect a single person’s aura on that whole side of the room.”

Crowley frowned, deep in thought. He had only glimpsed Aziraphale’s true form a handful of times over the centuries. Not that Aziraphale had explicitly forbid him from looking, but doing so felt a bit like observing a naked human without permission. It just wasn’t on. Crowley wondered how the angel might appear to a human, and was about to ask when the waiter returned to pour the wine. Crowley ordered a bloody steak and Anathema, to his mild surprise, the same.

“What does he look like?” Crowley blurted as soon as the waiter was out of earshot The tips of his ears burned hot. 

Anathema gave him a penetrating glance before focusing her attention back on Aziraphale. Her dark gaze turned into a thousand yard stare, eyes unfocused as she struggled to perceive the angel’s aura. Eventually she shook herself and looked back to Crowley. . 

“Like a firework,” she answered, sounding awed in spite of herself. 

“Huh,” said Crowley, mentally cataloguing the description beside his own interpretation. “And only as big as this room?”

“I don’t know. It’s like, it could be bigger. But the bulk of it is being physically contained to one side.”

“So you’re saying if Blackburn moved away…?”

Anathema shrugged. “Maybe. But how - “

Crowley snapped his fingers. 

Across the restaurant, a passing waiter tipped wine directly into Blackburn’s lap. The swear that followed was audible even at a distance, drawing the attention of the surrounding dining area and creating a momentary drop in conversation. Blackburn lurched to his feet and frantically began to dab the spot with a napkin, while Aziraphale soothed the distraught employee with a minor miracle and a reassuring pat on the arm.

“Did you just make that happen?” Anathema whispered fiercely. 

“Don’t be ridiculous. How could I possibly have made that happen?” Crowley replied, leaning back in his chair to peer around the potted plant. “Shame about the dark trousers, though. Imagine how much worse it would have been if they’d been light... Look, there he goes!” 

Anathema sat up straight, eyes flashing over the top of her wine glass.

“Okay, he’s moving…” She narrated under her breath. “He’s coming this way. No, wait, he’s rerouted. Yes, okay, he’s getting clear of it…”

Crowley sunk lower into his seat, holding his breath. A beat passed. “Well?”

Another moment of silence, and then - 

“Human,” Anathema said simply. “Best I can tell.”

Crowley expelled the air from his lungs in a whoosh. 

“You’re sure?” 

“Positive. You and your friend are the only ones in here whose auras look remotely out of place.” 

The sudden flood of relief that coursed through Crowley’s veins made him light-headed. He could have laughed. He would have, if he thought he could get away with it. Instead, he scrambled to sit back up in his chair, fingers trembling as he picked up his wine glass for the first time that night and took a drink. 

“So that’s it, then? Nothing else unusual about him?”

“Nope,” said Anathema, mirroring his enthusiasm in an equally subdued manner. “Well, wait. This isn’t necessarily unusual, but - “

“But what?” 

“His aura is red.” 

Crowley gave her a blank look. 

“A red aura usually means that a person is experiencing an intense emotion. Love, anger, that sort of thing,” Anathema explained hastily. At the expression on Crowley’s face she plowed on. “Before you freak out, normal humans have red auras all the time. This doesn’t necessarily have to mean anything.”

“If it doesn’t mean anything then why did you mention it?” Crowley hissed, casting anxious glances toward the hallway down which Blackburn had disappeared.

“You told me to tell you everything,” Anathema replied defensively. “And besides, it’s probably nothing. I’ll bet he’s just embarrassed. If you hadn’t just spilled wine on him we could have gotten a look at his default color.”

“There was no guarantee he’d ever leave that table,” Crowley said, twirling his wine glass precariously between two fingers. “Anyway, it’s too late now. What’s done is done.” 

“Maybe when he comes back out it’ll have gone back to normal,” Anathema suggested placatingly, training her eyes on the hallway. 

“Maybe,” Crowley agreed, but he remained unconvinced.

A few minutes passed before Blackburn reemerged from the bathroom. Crowley’s head swiveled to Anathema for confirmation, but she just shook her head. 

“Still red,” she sighed.

“Well, that’s that, then,” said Crowley, and he downed the rest of his glass in one go. Blackburn returned to his seat at Aziraphale’s table as though nothing had ever happened, and Crowley went back to watching their interaction in brooding, speculative silence. Wine was poured, conversation was had, and across the restaurant, Blackburn placed his hand over Aziraphale’s on the table and leaned in, as though speaking in earnest. Crowley’s stomach twisted as Aziraphale reached for his wine glass, dislodging Blackburn’s grip in the process. His hand did not return to the table. 

Anathema was companionably silent, watching sidelong as the rest of the evening unfolded below them. Their food was brought out only moments after Aziraphale and Blackburn’s arrived at the table, but Crowley found he had no appetite. Absently, he skewered dozens of holes into his dinner with the steak knife, while Anathema ate hers like a normal person. His concentration remained focused on the movement of Aziraphale’s elbows, presumably cutting food and bringing it to his mouth. Blackburn’s face, visible to Crowley, alternated between speaking and chewing in equal measure. From up on high, it all looked very civilized. Crowley imagined he could detect the falseness in their civility, the ridiculous pantomime that the meal really was, and contented himself with the fact that Blackburn did not try to touch Aziraphale again. 

The arrival of the waiter broke him out of his head. 

“Would you like to see a dessert menu?”

Crowley looked to Anathema. Across the restaurant, another waiter had stopped to offer the same service at Aziraphale’s table. Crowley’s hard stare turned into a full-blown glower as Blackburrn waved the menu away.

“Oh, no, thank you - “ 

“I’ll take a look,” Crowley interrupted Anathema’s refusal, snatching the menu out of the man’s hands. His eyes raked the list quickly, alighting on an item at the very bottom. “Two slices of opera cake. To-go. And make it quick,” he said, tossing the menu back at him.

The server bowed and carried their finished plates away, Crowley’s mangled steak on top of Anathema’s empty dish. Anathema smirked.

“Didn’t peg you for a sweet tooth,” she teased.

“I’m not,” said Crowley, and they left it at that. 

Down below, Aziraphale and Blackburn had pushed in their chairs and were heading toward the exit. Crowley’s heart began to pound at the possibility of losing sight of them together for even a minute. He sat like an animal on a leash, tethered to the table by societal convention and his own dessert order. As soon as the waiter returned with the bill and the to-go bag Crowley slapped a few hundreds down and sprung out of his chair like a coiled spring. Anathema quickly fell into step beside him. 

“You shouldn’t have gotten that opera cake,” she muttered, taking two strides for every one of his. “They’re long gone by now.”

“We don’t need to follow them again,” Crowley replied shortly, holding the front door open for her once they’d reached it. “Not tonight, anyway.” 

They came to a stop a few feet away from the valet. As expected, Aziraphale and Blackburn were long gone. Anathema tugged her coat closer to herself, her breath hanging in the air like puffy white clouds.

“Look,” she said quietly, taking in the grim expression on Crowley’s face. “Tonight was a success, alright? We’ve ruled out the possibility of him being inhuman. Now we can start focusing on other things.” She held up her bag. “I brought a few supplies with me, so I can get started working on some things tonight.”

“Good.” Crowley gave a curt nod of approval. “There’s a room in your name at the hotel across the street, as promised.” 

“Thank you.” Anathema shivered, and Crowley took that as his cue to leave. 

“Get some sleep. I’ll be in touch,” he said, ushering her toward the crosswalk. With a final nod they parted ways, Crowley to the car park and Anathema to the penthouse suite. 

The familiar pleasure of violating a few traffic laws helped to calm Crowley’s pulse as he sped across town. He pulled up outside the bookshop a short while later to find the dirty windows dark and gloomy; in his haste to catch up, he had overtaken Blackburn’s car. It was no matter. Crowley parked the Bentley saliently in front of the shop and headed inside, experiencing a sharp pang of relief as he sensed his shield intact alongside Aziraphale’s own. 

Normally he would have headed for Aziraphale’s backroom, but tonight he paused on the threshold, looking around with tired eyes. It was an even greater mess than before; Aziraphale had evidently been going through his cabinets, because several more piles had appeared on nearby tables and shelves, looseleaf papers scattered on every available surface. Crowley decided he was better off keeping away from all that mess, and instead plunked himself down behind the antique register up front. 

He picked up the nearest book and flipped through it, careful to leave the scrap of paper Aziraphale had used to bookmark his page undisturbed. The sound of the front door opening reached his ears a few minutes later. Crowley listened with bated breath for voices, any indication that Blackburn might have followed the angel inside, but heard only the swishing of fabric as Aziraphale hung his coat on the stand beside the door. 

“Crowley?”

“Over here.” Crowley stood up to announce his presence. 

Aziraphale appeared a moment later, dressed down in his waistcoat and shirt sleeves. Crowley thought he looked rather worn around the edges, as though he could do with a nice cup of tea, if not a good night’s sleep. Guiltily, he wondered if his presence was entirely unwelcome, and considered postponing their follow-up conversation until the next morning. But at that moment, their eyes met, and the tension in Aziraphale’s face lessened ever so slightly, a fond smile playing at the edges of his features. Crowley relaxed. 

“Didn’t think you went in for this mass-market stuff,” Crowley said, wagging the book playfully in the angel’s direction. 

“ _The Name of the Rose?_ It’s practically a classic!” Aziraphale replied, mock-offended. “And that is a first edition, so do be careful with it.” 

“Wouldn’t the first edition be in Italian?” 

“First English edition, then.”

“Didn’t think they made first editions in paperback," Crowley teased. "In any case, I hardly think something published in 1980 counts as a classic. Give it another hundred years, maybe.” With a final wag, Crowley set the book down and draped his elbows over the front counter. Aiming for casual and falling well short of the mark, he asked, “So, how was dinner?”

The abrupt transition from their usual banter saw Aziraphale’s mouth turn slightly down. “Alright, I suppose.”

“Just alright? Well, here, this might cheer you up.” Crowley reached down by his feet and held up the to-go bag. “Brought you something.”

Aziraphale took it from him, brow wrinkling as he scrutinized the logo on the front. “This is…”

“From the same restaurant. Yeah.”

There was a tense silence. Crowley saw no point in dragging the revelation out any further, though he fidgeted nervously with a fragment of broken pencil lead under his fingers all the same, waiting for Aziraphale to speak. Judging by the tightening of the fine lines around Aziraphale’s eyes and mouth, the puzzle pieces had just slotted into place. Aziraphale took a step back. 

“You followed me?”

“Technically?” Crowley winced, experiencing an unexpected rush of shame. “Yes.”

“Why?” 

“What choice did I have?” Crowley asked, withering slightly under the intensity of the angel’s gaze. “You didn’t heed any of my warnings. After everything I told you, after everything I said you still decided to go through with this - this dinner, thing. Anything could have happened. You could have been walking into the belly of the beast totally unprepared and neither of us would have known it.” 

With a self-righteous sniff Aziraphale thrust the to-go bag back into Crowley’s hands. 

“That was completely unnecessary,” he said coldly, putting another foot of distance between them. The front counter suddenly seemed a great chasm. Desperately, Crowley dialed back the accusatory statements and tried again, pulling the next words out of his mouth like teeth. 

“I’m sorry, angel, really. I just. Couldn’t let you go alone. I needed to make sure you were safe - that nothing was going to happen to you. Waiting for you to come back, not knowing if you even _would_... It would have driven me crazy,” Crowley confessed, his posture emanating an awkward tension. 

“I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself,” the angel reminded him stiffly.

“I know. I know you are, and I’m sorry.”

“So why tell me now? Why not keep the whole thing to yourself? Spare us both the argument?”

“Much as you might not want to believe it, I don’t _enjoy_ lying to you,” Crowley said, aghast.

“But you weren’t completely truthful with me this morning, were you?” 

Crowley hung his head. “Not entirely, no,” he admitted.

Aziraphale deliberated silently for a moment before releasing a short, long-suffering sigh. He walked around the counter to stand in front of Crowley, which was arguably more painful than the physical distance had been. He didn't deserve the angel's proximity, or the tidal wave of grace that threatened to engulf him. 

“If I’m going to forgive you, I need to know everything," Aziraphale stipulated. "No more lies, no more secrets. No more withholding information. I want you to tell me everything, plainly and from the beginning.” He crossed his arms expectantly. “Now, please.” 

Though the request was more than fair, Crowley squirmed with discomfort as he tried to recall the circumstances surrounding that morning’s affair. Where had it all gone wrong? What had precipitated this disastrous chain of events in the first place? “I never lied to you,” he began slowly, weighing the words before they hit his tongue. “But there are things... Things I didn’t tell you before.”

“Such as?”

Crowley concentrated. The scene in the backroom played like a reel before his eyes; Blackburn turning around halfway to the door, a malevolent glint in his eye, words coming out of his mouth that pierced like a knife... 

Ah, that was it.

“He knows what I am.”

“What?”

“He knows what I am,” Crowley repeated, voice rising in volume. “He knows, Aziraphale. He knows. He told me himself.”

By some miracle, Aziraphale actually looked alarmed. “What? When? What exactly did he say to you?”

“This morning. Right before he tucked tail and ran,” Crowley recounted. “ _‘Don’t think I don’t know what you are.’_ ” He imitated the cruel timbre of Blackburn’s voice with a curled lip. 

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” The angel demanded.

“I - I don’t know,” Crowley answered, wrong-footed. “I suppose I wasn’t thinking clearly.” 

That much was obvious now. At the time, Crowley thought he’d been doing the right thing, keeping that bit of information from him. It had seemed premature to involve Aziraphale until he could be absolutely certain what was going on, until he could provide concrete evidence as to Blackburn’s ulterior motivations. On a more selfish note, Crowley knew he’d also kept his mouth shut because if he hadn’t, he would have had to confess what exactly had happened after, the drastic measures he had been forced to take; a conversation they were rapidly hurtling toward now. 

“I just don’t understand,” Aziraphale said, breaking Crowley out of his reverie. “He’s never said anything like that to me before. Why would he say that to you and not tell me?”

“Why would he? He obviously doesn’t want you to know. He’s trying to keep you in the dark.” Crowley bit his lip before voicing his next question aloud. “Did you ask him about what happened this morning? Tonight at dinner?”

The little wrinkle between Aziraphale’s eyebrows deepened. “Ah. Yes. I did, in fact.”

“And?”

“He said what happened this morning was a misunderstanding. That you chased him off before he could explain himself.”

“I see,” said Crowley, forcibly calm. “And what was his explanation?”

“He said that when he’d found the door unlocked he’d assumed that I was in and the shop was open. He had only been looking through my collection, which I had given him permission to do, when the two of you crossed paths.”

“And did you find that answer satisfactory?” 

Aziraphale hesitated. “Not exactly, no.” 

A spark of hope alighted in Crowley’s chest. “Did you try and see if he was telling the truth like I suggested?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, reach out to him. Feel for his essence, his thoughts…?”

Aziraphale looked offended. “Of course not. You know I don’t like to make a habit of that. It’s an invasion of privacy.”

Crowley fought the urge to roll his eyes. Just as quickly as it had arrived, the spark was gone. “Yeah, well, good for you,” he said bitterly. “But just so you know, I tried, and it didn’t work. The bastard was blocking me.”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows shot up towards his hairline. “Blocking you?”

“Yeah, you know. Making his thoughts unreadable. Closing off his mind. That doesn’t happen often, and when it does, it’s not usually a good thing. Most humans aren’t even capable of it.”

Aziraphale looked uncomfortable. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, though,” he protested, shifting from foot to foot. “As I recall, there were certain monks whose minds were like a fortress back in the day.”

Crowley gave a mocking laugh. “Does he seem particularly holy to you? Hm? Particularly enlightened?”

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Aziraphale evaded.

“It has everything to do with everything,” Crowley said. “There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be accessible like any other human. Not unless he has something to hide.”

Aziraphale shook his head. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation for it. Perhaps it was a - a one time thing? A momentary slip? Tensions were high. The adrenaline could have impacted your ability to perceive his thoughts.“

Crowley grimaced at the insinuation of his own impotence. “Doesn’t happen.”

“But what if, just this once - “

“Nope.”

“But I’m saying, it could - “ 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley grit his teeth, the last of his patience snapping like a rubber band. “He’s blocking me on purpose. Alright? I know for a bloody fact, because I tried to possess him and it didn’t work.”

At these words the angel froze, his eyes momentarily glazed over. “You didn’t,” he whispered.

“I did,” said Crowley, realizing too late that he was unprepared to pay the price for his honesty. 

A crackle of energy filled the air in the ensuing silence; divine wrath, a holy, white hot charge. Crowley’s skin prickled as the angel rose to his full height, exuding power in pulsing waves that washed over him like dry desert heat. Unbidden, Crowley sank back into his chair and only barely managed not to cower.

“Why would you do that, Crowley, when you know full well how dangerous it is?” Aziraphale asked, his voice remarkably restrained in contrast to his presence. Crowley had half expected to hear his voice in multitudes, a heavenly chorus. “You could have killed him. You could have discorporated yourself, and then what? You think your people would just give you a new body, after everything that happened last year? That they would just sign off on it, and you could come back up straight away?”

“I was careful," Crowley insisted, his voice wavering like a plucked string. “And anyway, it didn’t work, so no harm done.”

“No harm done? You could have been obliterated off the face of the earth only hours ago and that’s all you have to say for yourself?” Aziraphale began to pace a tight circle, his footsteps striking the floorboards like the clash of righteous steel. “Do you even realize how reckless that was? How selfish? I mean honestly, Crowley, what was going through your mind? Were you even thinking about the consequences you could incur? Did you think about what sort of position you might have put me in should you have succeeded? Did you even consider my feelings?”

“Did you consider mine when you went out with Eugene tonight?”

At that Aziraphale stopped up short, turning to fix Crowley with a sharp, eagle-eyed stare. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Ngk - it,” Crowley fluttered, casting around for something to say. “I warned you not to go tonight and you didn’t listen to me!”

“Come now, Crowley," Aziraphale said pityingly. "He’s just an enthusiastic human with a lack of boundaries. He’s an American, in short. I was in no danger. I don’t understand why you are so set against me spending a little of my time with him.”

“What about _me?_ ”

Aziraphale gave him a blank, unaffected look.

“What _about_ you?”

Oh, that hurt.

That hurt bad. 

“You don’t even like books,” Aziraphale added, but Crowley barely heard him. His entire body stiffened so as not to physically crumple in response to the sudden pain that lanced through his corporation. He wanted to say something cool, something normal to distract from the conversation, so that Aziraphale wouldn’t know just how deeply his words had cut. But he couldn’t. His body refused to cooperate, betraying his shame with a ruddy flush and a prickle of unshed tears. 

How foolish he had been, operating under the assumption for so long that he was Aziraphale’s particular friend. That despite all evidence toward the contrary, his affection for the angel was returned. 

Rigidly, Crowley stood from the rickety chair and walked around the front counter, heading for the front door. Aziraphale swiveled on the spot, following the demon’s progress with surprise in his eyes.

“Crowley? Crowley, come back. Crowley!”

The ringing in Crowley’s ears drowned out the sound of Aziraphale’s cries. His feet carried him away until the front door of the shop banged shut behind him and abruptly cut the last of them off. 

Outside, the street was eerily silent. A light snow had begun to fall, muffling the sounds of traffic and the occasional gaggle of pedestrians. Crowley staggered a few feet away from the door and leaned back against a windowless wall. Several shaky breaths flooded his lungs as he raised his face to the sky, staring into the dark, starless night. Snowflakes landed on his cheeks, caught in his eyelashes. Tear tracks froze on his face and made his skin tight.

At length he rubbed his fist across his eyes and shoved off from the building. He bypassed the Bentley without a backward glance and walked aimlessly in one direction, through Soho and into the city beyond. The further he traveled from the bookshop the more his chest ached, as though he’d left his heart behind along with the car. 

He didn’t return to the Mayfair flat. Instead Crowley found himself inside St Pancras Station, boarding a train out of London with only a vague idea of how he’d come to be there. 

Distance, his brain told him through the fog, would be good. At least until his head cleared. This close, he couldn’t resist the temptation to stay by Aziraphale’s side. And when you were two immortal beings capable of living anywhere in the world, settling down in the same city was as good as living together. Right now, he needed to be elsewhere. Wherever this particular train was going would suffice. 

Crowley settled back into his seat in a mostly empty compartment. His fingers itched to remove his sunglasses, but he didn’t dare chance it in public. Instead, he shucked off his jacket and stuffed it into a makeshift pillow between the window and the side of his head. Eventually the train took off, and he closed his eyes as the gentle rocking lulled him into a numb sort of stupor. 

It had been a long day, the longest he could remember in a great while, and the exhaustion was finally catching up with him. Though the afternoon had replenished a bit of his demonic reserves, his strength was still overwhelmingly tapped. Unbidden, his chin dropped forward onto his chest, and he shook himself awake. The third time it happened his eyes stayed closed, and Crowley tipped head-first into a dream. 

He kept falling. Falling and falling and falling, tumbling through cosmic blackness, shooting through a pressurized void that threatened to suck the skin clean off his bones. The momentum carried all the fanfare of an implosion, like a star collapsing violently inwards on itself, and Crowley’s corporation disappeared from the train car with an ominous _pop!_ He tried to scream, but he had no mouth. Tried to claw his way out of the blackness, but he had no fingers, no hands. Fear, soul-deep, kept the dread from swallowing him whole, kept him alert through the entire process, which seemed to last a thousand eternities and only an instant at the same time.

Just as quickly as it had begun, the process was over. He was solid again. Pain blossomed in the forefront of Crowley’s mind, the metaphysical equivalent of all of one’s bones breaking at once. He opened his eyes and was blinded by harsh, fluorescent lighting that flickered overhead. With a hiss, he tried to push his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose, but discovered that, as had been the case in the void, he had no arms. He forced his eyes to adjust faster than was comfortable and quickly took inventory of his new surroundings. 

He was in a cold, rectangular room, no larger than 5x7. The floor beneath him was smooth, lightly pocked concrete. Streaks of white chalk surrounded his body in a circle, bordered by seven flaming candles. Two steel shelves stretched toward a tall ceiling on either side, while a handleless door fit into the wall behind him. Standing in front of the door was a man, who towered over Crowley’s serpentine form with a cruel smile on his face. Crowley recoiled and attempted to slither underneath one of the shelves for cover, but he could not travel outside the boundary of the circle. Up above, the man laughed, and the sound of it boomed around the enclosed space. 

“Anthony,” Blackburn enthused, crouching down to get a good look at him. “How good of you to finally join me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took a few liberties with the interior of The Gilbert Scott restaurant.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for your continued patience with this fic. Your comments and support mean the world to me!

A cold, grey morning rolled over the rooftops of London’s Soho, where an angel stood alone in a bookshop, cradling a telephone between shoulder and ear as a mug of tea went cold in his hands. The line rang several times before predictably heading to voicemail. 

_Hi, this is Anthony Crowley. You know what to do, do it with style._

“It’s me,” Aziraphale started over the sound of the beep, which promptly cut him off. He exhaled and tried again. “It’s me. Listen, I’m not sure if you received my last message just now. I think the operator cut me off part of the way through. Anyway, I won’t repeat it. I assume you’ve been listening, and it was just more of the same." He gave a tired sigh. "Look, I know you’re probably tired of hearing your phone ring by now, so if you’d just pick up and let me know you’re alright…” Aziraphale trailed off, eyes drifting toward the grandfather clock in the corner. It was half ten. “I’ve got to open up shop now, but I’ll try again later,” he concluded, lingering on the line a few moments longer before reluctantly ending the call. 

It was the second in a single morning, and with the way things had been going, it certainly would not be the last. Following their argument the previous week, he’d given Crowley approximately forty-eight hours to cool off before the phone calls had started in earnest. So far, not a single one had been answered, though he suspected the demon had listened to them all as he left them. Either that or he was asleep. Aziraphale hoped for the latter. 

Gathering his wits about him, Aziraphale drained his cup of tea with a grimace and gestured so that the sign in the window flipped to OPEN. Despite the fact that the damaged wards had been repaired and strengthened, he hadn’t been back to the library since the day of the break-in. It somehow didn’t feel entirely safe to leave, and so the bookshop had seen rather more regular hours than usual over the past couple of days as Aziraphale attempted to keep himself occupied. 

He felt more secure this way, shut up among his possessions. Not only that, he gleaned a sort of placebo satisfaction in the occasional stern conversation with a customer, as if reasoning with a student about why they could not, in fact, purchase his signed edition of _Maurice_ was a stand in for his unfinished argument with Crowley. At least these were debates he could win and feel good about. Or, not _good_ , exactly. But not bad, either, which was how he had been feeling since the moment Crowley walked out the door and he hadn’t gone after him. 

He should have gone after him. Aziraphale knew that now. 

At the time, he had told himself that Crowley wouldn’t have wanted him to, that he needed space, that it wouldn’t have made a difference if he had, but in hindsight he was not so certain. The more he reflected, the more he realized there were things he could have said that might have changed Crowley’s mind, that might have made him stay. Which begged the question, why hadn’t he said them? Force of habit, perhaps, so used to keeping the demon at arm’s length that it had become second nature? 

Aziraphale shook himself out of his reverie. It did no good to dwell on what was done. After spending millennia doing exactly that, he had learned to let the little things go, or to try his best to at the very least. All he could do now was wait for Crowley to forgive him as he always had and reappear in his life, however long it might take. Couldn’t be longer than the last time, Aziraphale contented himself to think, although he was quite certain he didn’t have it in him to wait another century if so. Hence the impatient phone calls.

Officially open for business, Aziraphale returned to the project he had begun several days ago for want of something to do: a small stack of manuscripts in lost languages that sat piled on his desk. He was attempting to translate the texts into English from memory. The work was slow and tedious, and for all his efforts he hadn’t much to show for it; a notebook filled with crossed out lines and copious amounts of question marks. Initially, he had contemplated occupying his time with something a little more strenuous, such as clearing and dusting the shelves by hand (a task that Crowley frequently reminded him was long overdue). But in the end he’d decided against it, after cleaning the first shelf and realizing that his unoccupied mind was poor company to keep. So he read and reread, wrote and crossed out, until his attention inevitably drifted back toward the silent telephone or the bell above the shop door, hoping that at any moment either one of them might ring and signal Crowley’s reemergence in his life.

It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes later that the bell above the door did chime, announcing the entrance of a customer. Aziraphale paused in the process of searching for a book on translation and debated whether or not to make an appearance out from behind the bookshelf. On the one hand, he didn’t want some hooligan thinking the shop was unattended and therefore rife for plunder, but on the other, there was a possibility that if he stayed very quiet they might leave. 

“Hello?” Heavy footsteps clunked across the floor, travelling away from the door and further into the shop. “Are you open?”

Aziraphale took a deep breath and decided to chance it. Armed with a small, tattered book, he appeared from out behind the shelves just as the intruder crossed his path. 

“Oh!”

There was an awkward stumbling as they avoided bumping into one another, feet nearly entangled. Aziraphale reached out a steadying hand and righted them both. 

“Oh, dear, I’m so sorry. Didn’t mean to frighten you,” Aziraphale apologized, offering a wane smile. It vanished quickly, and a small crease appeared between his eyebrows as he scrutinized the stranger’s face. Something about her looked terribly familiar. “I’m sorry, have we met?” 

“Uh.” The young woman glanced away, as though not entirely sure how to answer the question. “Well, actually - ”

At the sound of the American accent, Aziraphale held up a hand. “Wait a moment. I remember.” It was all coming back to him now, a bicycle on a moonless night and an encounter on the tarmac of an airbase. The puzzle pieces locked into place. “Miss Device. How nice to see you again.”

“Likewise,” said Anathema, dazedly shaking the hand Aziraphale offered. He gestured for the two of them to walk, and she fell into step beside him.

“How strange, us running into one another in Soho,” he mused, as he escorted the young lady out of the stacks and toward the more open area beside the front counter. “I do hope you weren’t looking for me. Not that it isn’t delightful to see you again, but what with the circumstances of our past few meetings, well. You understand, there is a precedent.” 

Anathema rejected the sudden cup of tea that had appeared in Aziraphale’s hands. She looked rather uncomfortable. “No, of course, I understand. I’m sorry to drop in. I wouldn’t have, only I haven’t been able to get ahold of Mr Crowley, and, well…” She trailed off, subtly craning her neck around the shop as though looking for him. “Is he here now?” 

“No,” Aziraphale answered, lofting a surprised eyebrow. “I’m afraid he isn’t. Why? Should he be?” 

“No! I mean, not necessarily. I guess I just assumed, you know, what with his car being parked out front.” 

“I’m sorry?”

“The old black car out on the curb? The um, Bentley? That is his car, right?”

The smile froze on Aziraphale’s face. “Ah,” he said, and without bothering to articulate himself any further he strode the distance to the front door and flung it open.

Sure enough, the Bentley was parked just outside, gleaming against the curb in the exact same spot Crowley had left it five days ago. A sickening feeling lodged in Aziraphale’s gut, and on impulse he reached out to feel for the other’s presence, seeking the familiar demonic aura that had come to be like background noise in his life. Aziraphale felt nothing, not even a whisper of it, and his blood turned to ice in his veins in a way that was wholly unrelated to the chill seeping in from outside. 

There were only a handful of times in recent memory that Aziraphale could recall the absence of Crowley’s presence, and nearly all of them had been related to the demon’s discorporation. The idea that something like that had happened now induced a feeling of instant panic, and Aziraphale felt his extremities begin to go numb, his breath seizing in his over-tight chest in an absurdly human way. 

He forced a deep breath and attempted to think clearly. There could be another explanation unrelated to the demon’s discorporation, though the only other thing that came to mind was an argument in St James Park, and Crowley’s plea for Holy Water. At the time, Aziraphale had believed it to be a suicide pill, Crowley’s Plan B in case things got out of hand. After Crowley had used it to save his own life last year, Aziraphale had been only too happy to recently supply him with more as a precaution against their mutual enemies. The thought that he might have gone and used it on himself as Aziraphale had initially feared, after something as small as a petty argument, was beyond unbearable. 

Anathema appeared at Aziraphale’s side and peered out at the Bentley. He managed to pull himself out of his thoughts long enough to speak. 

“I don’t know how long it’s been there,” he admitted aloud, clutching the door frame for support. 

“Looks like a while,” Anathema observed darkly. 

Aziraphale managed a weak nod. It was true. While it hadn’t snowed in several days, the car was covered in a thick white blanket of it, indicating a prolonged stay in the same spot outside. Aziraphale cursed his reclusive nature, thinking that if he had only ventured outside before now he might have noticed the car so much sooner. If it weren’t for Anathema, there was no telling how much longer it might have taken him to discover it. Which begged the question, why exactly was Anathema looking for Crowley, and how had she known she might find him at the bookshop? 

The woman in question shivered beside him and Aziraphale forced his eyes away from the vehicle, ushering her back inside and closing the door to the shop behind them. He sagged back against it.

“Is something wrong?” Anathema asked, her voice tinged with a sort of fervent concern. “Have the two of you not been in touch?” 

Aziraphale shook his head. “I haven’t been able to reach him for a few days now. I’ve tried, but he’s not been answering his telephone. I assumed he just didn’t want to speak with me, but now…” he trailed off with a frown. “I’m sorry, my dear, but do you know something? Is that why you’re here looking for him?”

Anathema refused to meet his eyeline. “Perhaps we should sit down,” she hedged. 

Aziraphale shook his head so quickly it spun. “No. Thank you, but no. I appreciate your concern, but I beg you, do not keep me in suspense. If you know something, tell me now.”

There was a tense pause. Then, wordlessly, Anathema reached into her bag and withdrew a small plastic container. Inside was what appeared to be a dead plant. Aziraphale accepted it from her and squinted at it, feeling out of his depth. Plants were really more Crowley’s thing and Aziraphale wished, not for the first time, that the demon were here now to help him puzzle this whole thing out. 

“It’s a redbud sprout,” Anathema explained. When Aziraphale continued to look perplexed she rephrased. “Also known as the Judas tree.”

Ah. The term struck a chord with the angel, and he remembered hearing somewhere the legend of the Judas tree, named for the specimen from which Judas supposedly hung himself after betraying Christ. The recognition must have shown on his face, because Anathema barreled ahead in her explanation. 

“It’s meant to signify a great betrayal. I don’t know how much stock you place in human magic, but I have a pouch of seeds. I selected one at random and planted it in a bit of soil. This is what grew.” 

“What are you suggesting?” Aziraphale asked, fingers tightening unconsciously around the container.

“Nothing about Mr Crowley!” Anathema said quickly, seeming to read the hostility on his face. “In fact, I planted the seed at his request. He contacted me about a week ago because he was worried. About you, actually.” 

“Me?”

“Yes. He said… Well, he said that there was someone in your life who concerned him. Someone he didn’t trust, and he wanted my help determining whether this person was hiding anything or not.”

“Blackburn,” Aziraphale murmured, and Anathema nodded.

The knot in Aziraphale’s stomach redoubled. It was a lot of information to process all at once. While he couldn’t possibly fathom Crowley’s reason for enlisting a human occultist to aid in his witch hunt against Eugene, he had no reason to doubt the young woman was telling the truth. That said, her preliminary results alone were not enough to concern Aziraphale. It was only coupled with the fact that he had just been staring at a snow-covered Bentley parked in the same spot Crowley had left it five days ago that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on-end. Something had to be wrong. 

“I think I’d better go and check on him,” Aziraphale whispered, heading for the coat rack and hurriedly donning his winter layers. 

Anathema followed. “I’m coming with you.”

“Oh dear, I’d really rather you didn’t,” Aziraphale said distractedly. “I don’t know what sort of situation we’ll be walking into, and I’m afraid I can’t guarantee your safety.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

Aziraphale spared her a glance. There really wasn’t time to argue the issue, and the girl looked incredibly determined. In his experience, it was best not to argue with humans when they wore that sort of expression. 

“Very well,” he said, “but you must do exactly as I say while we are together, no questions asked. Do you understand?” 

Anathema nodded, and together they piled into the back of a black cab and sped toward Mayfair. It was mid-morning, and were it not for the help of a few miracles the London traffic might have been unbearable. Instead, the cab managed the distance in record time and dropped them on the curb outside Crowley’s sleek grey building before speeding away across the ice. 

Aziraphale held the door for Anathema, and together they crossed the small lobby and entered the lift. It released them shortly thereafter on Crowley’s floor at the very top of the building. After a brisk walk to the demon’s front door, Aziraphale found himself hesitating in front of it. For courtesy’s sake, he knocked. 

There was no response. 

Flashing a slightly guilty look at Anathema, he turned the knob and swung it open. “Forgive me. I don’t normally condone breaking and entering, but I figure under the circumstances…”

“Of course,” she replied, and together the pair entered the flat, taking care to close the door behind them.

Motion activated lighting flickered on overhead as they crossed the hall, casting a soft white glow over the grey walls and concrete flooring. It might have been ambient, if not for the ominous feeling that had settled in the pit of Aziraphale’s stomach. Instead, he felt as though he were trapped in one of those cop dramas Crowley loved so much, about to stumble unwittingly across a crime scene. 

Braced for the worst, it was with mild unease that they found the flat untouched. Not a cushion out of place, not a smudge on any of Crowley’s gleaming stainless steel appliances. Anathema tailed the angel as he walked the flat twice over, searching for any sign of a disturbance or of Crowley’s presence. They found nothing. Even the sheets on the bed were untouched, so straight and smooth it seemed as though they’d been made with a level. 

The last room to be searched was Crowley’s office. The sleek black desk appeared undisturbed, nothing more than a closed laptop, pencil cup and a telephone resting atop its polished surface. Upon further examination the answering machine light was blinking, announcing the number of unheard voicemails over and over again; seventeen. Aziraphale stared at it very hard. That seemed an inordinately high number. There was simply no way that they were all from him, which could only mean that someone else had called for Crowley, possibly to leave a message with information that might pertain to his whereabouts. With bated breath, the angel reached out to poke the machine before drawing his hand back in, uncertain. 

“I can do that,” Anathema said, seeming to predict what he had wanted. At his nod, she pressed a button and a robotic voice began to play. 

_You have seventeen unheard messages. New message:_

_Crowley, are you there? It’s me. If you’re listening, would you please pick up? Look, I don’t like how our last conversation ended. I’d like to talk things out. In person, if that’s alright. Call me back. Or come over. I’ll be waiting either way._

There was a soft sigh, and then a click as the machine began playing the next message. Then the next, and the next, all of them beginning with the sometimes terse, sometimes apologetic, and always increasingly anxious sound of Aziraphale’s voice.

“Is there any way we could, er, skip…?” Aziraphale asked, after listening to himself hang up in an irritable huff, only to call back seconds later and apologize for it. 

Anathema nodded awkwardly, and began skipping each message at the sound of the angel’s voice. Gradually, the blinking red count ran down until the entire cache had been cleared. Not a single missed call was from anyone other than Aziraphale himself. He might have been embarrassed, had he not been so worried. 

“Well. That’s that, then,” said Aziraphale with a little throat clearing, and he prepared to turn and leave the office. Something caught his eye before he could. With the blinking red light of the answering machine now vanished, another red color caught his eye, a large button on the body of the telephone, labeled in neat white letters below:

**WORK**

Aziraphale slowly approached the phone, brow furrowed in concentration. Anathema took a step back to give him room as he hovered over it, tapping a plump finger against his chin. 

“What is it?” she asked, as his hand moved to hover over the receiver. “Are you going to call someone?” 

“I believe I may,” Aziraphale answered, listening to the thrum of the dial tone in his ear. His heart gave an anxious squeeze, fingertip poised over the big red button. 

Oh, what was he doing? If Crowley could only see him now he’d snatch the telephone right out of his hand and slam it back down, only to treat him to a lecture about the serious differences between their respective head offices. 

But that was just it, wasn’t it? Crowley _wasn’t_ there to stop him, wasn’t there to knock some sense into his fluffy head, and this could very well be Aziraphale’s only reliable shot at finding out where he had gone and bringing him back. That alone was worth the risk, Aziraphale concluded, and so he steeled his resolve against any lingering doubt in his mind and prepared to dial.

“Please be very quiet,” Aziraphale said, throat bobbing as he swallowed a pesky lump. “The last thing we need is for them to hear you.” 

“Who?” Anathema asked nervously, but Aziraphale had already pressed the red button. 

A tense minute passed as the line rang. Anathema looked torn between curiosity and horror, and seemed to be contemplating backing away. Aziraphale tried to reassure her with a kind smile, but the gesture didn’t quite touch his eyes. At last the line answered, and a voice spoke out from the speaker phone, rendering the receiver in Aziraphale’s hand useless. 

“Crowley.”

“Ah, no. Not Crowley,” Aziraphale said as calmly as possible, speaking into the telephone. “An, erm, associate of his. Who am I speaking to?”

“Dagon. Lord of the Files, Master of Torment.”

Oh. Aziraphale suddenly felt, if possible, even more wrong-footed than before. He had heard the demon known as Dagon speak prior to this, of course, once in the Bentley and once in a bathtub, though in both those instances the demon had been unaware that they had been addressing Aziraphale. This was the first time they had interacted with one another on equal footing since before the Fall, back when Dagon had gone by another name, and it was jarring to say the least. Still, it was convenient that Crowley’s immediate supervisor was the Lord of the Files, considering that was exactly who Aziraphale needed to speak to at the moment. 

“Hello, Dagon,” Aziraphale said, infallibly polite. “This is the Principality Aziraphale. I wonder if I might ask you a few questions.”

There was a stunned silence on the other line followed by an ugly choking sound, like a drowning victim coughing up water. Aziraphale realized with mild horror that it was meant to be laughter. “Aziraphale,” said the demon, the name curling off their tongue. “Yes, I know who you are. No longer a Principality though, are you?”

Aziraphale shrugged for Anathema’s benefit but otherwise ignored the question. “Listen, Dagon, there’s something I need to ask you. It’s about Crowley.”

A wet sound, and Aziraphale knew instinctively that Dagon had spat on the floor. The angel’s nose wrinkled. “The traitor? What about him?”

“If, well, let’s say hypothetically, something were to have happened to him, something er, demonic in nature, would you have kept a record of it?” Anathema shook her head emphatically, and Aziraphale hurried to amend, “it doesn’t necessarily have to be demonic. Anything at all, really.”

“Why? Has something happened to him?”

“That’s what I’m hoping to find out.”

There was a short pause. “We keep records of everything. Organized by date of occurrence,” said Dagon, and Aziraphale’s heart gave a tentative leap. “When abouts?”

“Five days ago.” 

“Mm, that’s quite recent.” A noise reached them then that might have been the sound of shuffling papers. “It’ll be on the bottom of the pile, I’m afraid. We’re only just now processing reports from 1969. Busy year down here, I can tell you that much. But listen, Aziraphale, I’d love to help you out. I can certainly give you a call when we’re caught up.”

Aziraphale sighed into the unnecessary mouthpiece. “Dagon, please.”

“Please what?” asked the demon, voice positively dripping with delight.

“This is all rather urgent, and I would be exceedingly grateful if you were to, well, expedite things.” 

“What’s in it for me?” 

Aziraphale frowned. “What do you want?” 

The words had hardly left his mouth before a sudden flash of light and a loud, thunderous crash reverberated through the room, not unlike an ocean wave breaking in a storm. Anathema would have screamed were it not for the fact that Aziraphale had anticipated it and clapped a firm hand over her mouth before such a sound could escape. Together, they leapt away from the desk as a flood of icy water cascaded off its surface, drenching their shoes and pooling on the concrete floor beneath. A few fish flopped in the spill, filling the air with a stench so foul Aziraphale was forced to release Anathema and cover his mouth and nose with a handkerchief. 

A pile of waterlogged papers had appeared on the desk. Aziraphale crept over a gasping tuna and peeled the first sheet aside, scanning the document critically. 

“Yes, hello Dagon?” Aziraphale tried, removing the handkerchief only as long as it remained necessary to speak. “What am I looking at?”

“Standard demonic contract,” came the reply, crackling slightly as the poor, abused telephone bled water. 

“Ah.” Aziraphale glanced back at Anathema, who looked positively green around the gills. With a silent gesture the flood of fish vanished, leaving only a vaguely metallic stench in its wake. Aziraphale returned his attention to the contract, now miraculously dry, and frowned. 

“Standard, you say?” asked the angel, removing his spectacles from an inside pocket and leafing through the pages with narrowed eyes. 

“That’s right.”

A moment of silence descended as Aziraphale quickly scanned the pages, the lines in his forehead deepening with every turn. At last, he spoke again. “Dagon, I’m sending this back with some revisions,” he said as he pressed his palm over the last sheet of paper. A heavenly glow, so white it was almost blue, lit the document briefly before the stack disappeared altogether. 

There was a loud, wet snort on the other end. “Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me.”

“I’m afraid not.” 

“This is unacceptable. Completely unacceptable. For Hell’s sake, what have you done to my Conditions Upon Falling clause?”

“This isn’t my first demonic contract,” Aziraphale stated simply as he folded his glasses and tucked them away. “Now, do we have a deal?” 

“Deal?” Dagon’s tone was rapidly rising, so shrill it made Aziraphale wince. “I don’t think so, Principality. You’ve completely changed the rules here. And what’s this bit about Unconditional Surrender?” 

“These are my terms, Dagon. You may take them or leave them.” 

A long minute passed. Low muttering continued to sound from the speaker, punctuated by the occasional snarl or fit of hysterical laughter. At great length Dagon spoke again, grudgingly awed. “I want complete immunity, none of this partial bullshit,” they growled out. “Information disclosure _beginning_ with your severance from Heaven. And in the event that you do Fall, you’re one of mine.” 

“Done,” said the angel, and a surge of energy passed through the air, a feeling like being bound to the atmosphere itself. Aziraphale more or less ignored it, focusing instead on the matter at hand. “So, the bottom of the pile?” 

“Right,” said Dagon, and there was a slight pause. “I’m going to have to put you on hold.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale said amicably, and an ear-splitting rendition of Beethoven’s Fifth filled the room, as though played by tone-deaf six year olds on the recorder. 

“Dagon?” Anathema whispered fiercely, coming up behind Aziraphale’s shoulder. “The fertility god?” 

“The demon,” Aziraphale corrected quietly, and he held a finger to his lips to usher in silence. Not a moment later Dagon’s voice returned. 

“Aright, let’s see. Friday, Friday, what happened Friday… Ah, here’s something. Cow flesh disguised as a human sacrifice for Naamah? No, no… Burning ceremony for Ishat? Nope, that’s not it. This is all morning stuff. Let me see if I can look a bit later in the day. Do you have an exact time frame I should be focusing on?”

“Sometime after 10pm,” Aziraphale answered, shifting impatiently from foot to foot. “I’m sorry, but is there any way you might hurry things along?”

“I’m sorting through the entire backlog of demonic activity in the greater London area,” Dagon snapped. “You’ll have to give me a minute. Ah! Here it is. One infamous Anthony J Crowley, summoned Friday evening shortly before midnight from Slough to Oxfordshire.”

Aziraphale’s stomach plummeted. “Oxfordshire? Can you be more specific?”

“No.”

“Well, is there anything else? Any other records on file that might help locate him?”

“Not that I can find. He hasn’t used his powers since, and he’s not been discorporated that I’m aware of, so I’d assume he’s still holed up wherever that summoning circle took him.”

“Right.” Aziraphale attempted a steadying breath against the wave of nausea that threatened to overtake him. “Well, thank you, Dagon. This has been most helpful.”

“Don’t thank me,” said the demon, a sick smile in their gurgling voice. “Just remember our deal.” 

“How could I forget?” Aziraphale replied cordially, although he practically already had.

With that, the call was ended, and a gush of slimy water oozed from the various openings of the telephone, out from between the keys and through the tiny pin prick holes of the speaker. Aziraphale restored it with a snap before turning to Anathema. 

“Shall we go?”

The girl attempted a nod, and they left Crowley’s flat in almost the same state they’d entered it - cold, empty, and untouched, though with the lingering scent of dead fish. In the lift back down to the lobby Anathema finally spoke for the first time in a long while, after seemingly compartmentalizing the past half hour as well as any human being could be expected to. 

“What was all that about?” she asked, her tone remarkably calm. Shrewd, even, which surprised Aziraphale. 

“Which part are you referring to?” Aziraphale asked for clarification.

“The contract. What did it say originally, and how did you amend it to make Dagon so mad?” 

The doors of the lift slid open before them, and they were emptied out into the building’s lobby. “Never you mind,” Aziraphale said vaguely, gesturing for her to take the lead.

They exited through the front doors and paused on the edge of the sidewalk, where Aziraphale flung out a hand. A black cab appeared almost instantaneously, and they clambered into the backseat and closed the door behind them. 

“Where to?” asked the cabbie. 

Aziraphale looked at Anathema. “Where are you staying?”

“The Fairway hotel.” She lowered her voice. “But, I mean, shouldn’t we discuss this further? I don’t really need to go back yet.”

“There’s really nothing left to discuss,” Aziraphale said calmly, before addressing the cabbie. “The Fairway hotel, please.”

Unwilling to accept defeat, Anathema continued speaking quietly. “Are you sure? It’s just, I feel like there’s a lot that we still don’t know. I think I could be of some use to you.” 

With all the authority afforded him by the grace of God, Aziraphale said, “trust me, my dear. I do not need help for what comes next.” 

With that, the young woman fell silent, staring at her feet until the car arrived at her hotel. After promising to call her with any new developments, the cab turned around to drop Aziraphale off in front of the empty bookshop. Lost in thought, Aziraphale hardly noticed as the city sped by outside the window, focused as he was on unraveling the tangled web of thoughts in his mind.

If Aziraphale were to set aside their differences and trust what Dagon had told him, Crowley’s disappearance was due to the fact that he had been summoned to Oxfordshire, the county which boasted both Oxford University and the Bodleian. As the director of said library it was highly likely Blackburn lived nearby, which, combined with both Crowley and Anathema’s less-than-glowing testimony, lent credence to the idea that he was somehow involved in all of this. Circumstantial evidence, all of it: Oxfordshire was rather large, after all — but the facts all pointed toward a single, uncomfortable truth. 

Aziraphale was not ready to accept it yet. Even as anger swirled in the pit of his stomach, he was not able to condemn a man — nay, a _friend_ , so easily. There was one last thing he needed to check, one final nail in the coffin of this whole fiasco, which would confirm beyond the shadow of a doubt the man's guilt. Until then, Aziraphale would take no action.

Soon enough, the cab dropped him in front of the bookshop, right alongside the abandoned Bentley. Aziraphale paused in front of it for a brief moment, as if by staring hard enough he might will its owner to appear out of thin air. He had no such luck, of course, although he contented himself with the fact that the car had miraculously failed to accrue a single parking ticket. If Crowley’s long standing miracles and expectations were still in effect, it had to mean he was alive at the very least.

The cold eventually spurred him onward, and the angel ventured inside the bookshop at last. Not bothering to remove his coat, he headed straight for the back room and flipped on the overhead light. The mess from the break-in was still a work in progress. Aziraphale had found it too upsetting to pour over the damaged manuscripts for any prolonged period of time, and so he had been working on the task in small chunks each day. Thus, he wasn’t entirely surprised that the particular disturbance he was looking for now had escaped his notice for so long, and yet the evidence was there amidst the chaos all the same: 

Someone had moved the file cabinet.

Crossing the room in two strides, Aziraphale stopped in front of the old cabinet Blackburn had apparently torn through just under a week ago and grasped the top edge. It turned effortlessly on a pivot to reveal a small safe nestled into the wall. The old fashioned lock on the outside was more for show than anything. Aziraphale had placed wards here back when the shop first opened hundreds of years ago and had scarcely thought about them since. Unfortunately, unlike the wards that had been damaged the day of the break in, these enchantments were gone completely. Disabled, indetectable, in a way that Aziraphale’s extrasensory abilities had failed to pick up on. 

Stooping low, Aziraphale turned the lock thrice, his heart beating rapidly as he did so. A soft click indicated the safe had been cracked, and for the first time in innumerable decades Aziraphale opened the metal door and peered inside. 

It was empty. A few streaks in the dust along the bottom were all that remained of what had once been a vast collection of scrolls, manuscripts and ancient books, stolen right out from under his nose. Though he hadn’t expected any differently, it still hurt, the evidence of the betrayal right in front of his eyes. 

Unlike the books Aziraphale proudly displayed around the shop, the items once contained within the safe were not things the angel was particularly proud to own. Books on dark magic, manuscripts detailing black rituals, dictionaries of infernal languages, and dread sigils and summoning instructions had all been compiled over the centuries and stuffed inside a tiny, forgotten alcove of the bookshop. Why he hadn’t just destroyed the materials as soon as they came into his possession was beyond him. As an angel, it should have been his first instinct, and perhaps it had been. But his human vices, his thirst for knowledge and penchant for hoarding it had outweighed the inclination, and instead he’d stashed them away like a dog burying a bone, only to forget about it until some other beast beat him to it and dug it back up again. 

Tears of anger welled in the corners of Aziraphale’s eyes, but he refused to shed them. What a fool he had been. A blind, selfish fool. If he had only listened to Crowley from the beginning, if he had only trusted his word and kept his distance from the human, none of this might have happened. Because there was no mistaking it now; Crowley had been summoned by Blackburn, and it was entirely Aziraphale’s fault. He had been stubborn, so determined to believe the best in humanity that he was willing to turn a blind eye to the red flags that kept cropping up everywhere. It was the way he had been designed; love thy neighbor, forgive them their trespasses. It was as much his nature to be merciful as it was Crowley’s to be suspicious. 

But there was a line, and whether he knew it or not, Blackburn had crossed it. Even an angel had limits, far-flung as they undoubtedly were, and Aziraphale would be damned if he was going to allow for their continued violation. Crowley’s hours in captivity, if that was truly the fate that had befallen him, were numbered. Now that he had the proof he needed, there was nothing to stop him from ending this absurdity once and for all. 

With a grim set to his mouth, Aziraphale shut the safe, secured his scarf around his neck, and ventured back out onto the chilly London streets. As he bypassed the Bentley, covered in a layer of ice-encrusted snow that he just knew would have broken Crowley's heart, he lifted a silent prayer and vowed not to return until he had taken back that which belonged to him, demon included.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on [tumblr](https://walkwithursus.tumblr.com) for writing updates.


	7. Chapter 7

Six days had elapsed since Crowley had been taken captive. Not his longest experience in a hostage situation by a long shot, but not his shortest either. 

That was his best estimate, anyway, given the circumstances. There were no windows in the room where he was being kept with which to orient himself, no sun-ups or sun-downs to count the passage of time with. But this wasn’t Crowley’s first stint in captivity, and if six millennia worth of experience had taught him anything it was that humans were predictable. _Earth_ was predictable, and there were cues that one could use to count the days, if one only paid attention. For instance, the number of times a person’s clothing changed or the growth of a captor’s hair and beard. Even the change of seasons in the air, pollen in spring, decay in autumn, could indicate time’s passage, though Crowley desperately hoped he would be free long before it came to that. 

Unlike the majority of Crowley’s experiences in captivity, everything about his circumstances had been designed for maximum suffering: the chill of the room, being stuck in his serpent form, the discomfort of the concrete floor, Blackburn had planned it all down to the last detail. It wasn’t a dark, dank dungeon by any means, but Crowley might have found that preferable to the blinding fluorescents and sterility of the room he found himself in now. At least a dungeon would offer familiarity. This, on the other hand, the _silver box_ was detestable in its novelty.

That, and it was unbearably dull. The room was small, the circle smaller still, leaving Crowley almost no room to stretch out. The best he could do was slither in circles, something he had done often enough when he’d first arrived to have irritated the scales on his underbelly on the gritty concrete floor. 

Eventually he lost the energy to continue crawling and resigned himself to lying still, coiled in on himself in a circular pile with his snout tucked in the center. Crowley ached to sleep to pass the hours, but his traitorous body would not allow it. Every time he began to drift off his mind would jolt him back into alertness, convinced that if he were to rest his eyes for even a moment it would mean his untimely demise. As if that weren’t enough, despite being unable to sleep the cold sapped his energy, and Crowley ended up in a sort of dormant state anyway, barely conscious and relatively immobilized. Thus, he was only dimly aware that a door had opened at some point and Blackburn had reentered.

At length he looked up. A new set of clothes. A fresh shave. It was probably morning, the dawn of what Crowley could only assume to be the seventh day. As Blackburn approached he called Crowley by an old name, an infernal name, the sound of it clunky on his human tongue. 

“Crowley,” he corrected, though rather dully. “My name is Crowley.”

“Not according to this it’s not,” said Blackburn, and he waved an enormous leatherbound book in one hand. Crowley had failed to notice it upon the man’s entrance, but now that he had it was the only thing he had eyes for. It looked positively ancient, the sort of thing copied and illuminated by hand long before Guttenberg and his printing press. As Blackburn hovered over him Crowley imagined it slipping from the man’s grasp to crush his head and winced. One little accident like that and he was donezo - finished, kaput. The weakness of this corporation was one of its many drawbacks, all of which had been thrown into sharp relief over the past week. 

“Do you know what this is?” the man asked. When Crowley didn’t answer Blackburn continued, balancing the tome on his forearm and flipping it open to a bookmarked page. The ancient paper looked as though it might crumble to dust as he turned it, and Crowley imagined Aziraphale’s horror at Blackburn’s lack of gloves, each touch exposing the delicate pages to the damaging oils of his bare skin. “No? Come on, surely you’ve seen it before.”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Really? I find that hard to believe, considering this whole book is about you. Well, not _just_ about you, but you are in it an awful lot. Perhaps you’re familiar with the authors? Alinardo of Grottaferrata, and his novice Bernadino of Ockham?”

Recognition dawned slowly, and by the time Crowley had fully remembered little old Alinardo he was more alert than he’d been in days. Were he in another body, he might have kicked and swore. Instead, he gave a low hiss and coiled tighter in on himself. 

It had been hundreds of years since Crowley had last been summoned, and for the longest time he’d thought all instructions detailing the process to be lost or destroyed, this book included. Evidently, he’d been very, very wrong. 

Crowley had spent much of the fourteenth century posing as a blind monk. Orders from downstairs had bade him work closely with Pope John XXII, whose controversy would lead to an invasion of Italy and the installation of an antipope, Nicholas V (for which Crowley had received a condemnation). At one point during this assignment he had been stationed in a Franciscan friary as a means of gathering intelligence for the papacy, and it was there that he had encountered Alinardo of Grottaferrata.

Old Alinardo was a long standing member of the Fraticelli. Stooped, toothless and nearly deaf, Crowley had perceived him to be of virtually no threat, and had made the mistake of revealing his eyes to him in private. It had been an enormous error. Alinardo had taken one look at Crowley’s snake-like pupils and sounded the alarm, believing himself to have encountered the antichrist. Fortunately for Crowley, Alinardo’s advanced age meant he had surpassed the point at which he might have been revered by the other monks, and instead was discredited on account of his apparent senility. Though he tried to convince the Superior General that the strange new monk known as Antonio was really a devil in disguise, not a soul among the friary believed him, and Alinardo lived out his days in ignominy. Of course, Crowley hadn’t felt safe in the friary after that and had fled the instant he had the chance, but not before young Bernadino, Alinardo’s novice, had taken a marked interest in him. 

Bernadino spent the rest of his adult life learning all there was to know about the blind monk known as Antonio who had vanished all those years ago. One of the pluses of working in a monastery was the access to important religious texts, and somehow the novice was able to trace Antonio back to Crowley in some sort of deranged quest to avenge his shamed master. The handful of decades before Bernadino had finally succumbed to old age were fairly miserable for Crowley, and one of the many reasons the 14th century had been a bit of a nightmare. 

“You were wondering how I found you,” Blackburn elaborated, pulling Crowley out of his own thoughts. “Here’s your answer. It wasn’t easy, I’ll tell you that much. I thought once I had a book like this in hand everything would fall into place, but it turned out to be a bit more complicated than that. I knew you had to be in here, of course. And as you can see,” Blackburn waved a hand around the enclosure, “I figured it out eventually.” 

“I can’t imagine how,” Crowley droned. 

“There’s an entire section dedicated to recognizing you, actually.” Blackburn cleared his throat and dragged the tip of his index finger down the page. “Let’s see here… Ah. _Imitates the condition of the blind to hide the serpentine quality of its eyes, or else wears smoked lenses to disguise their disfigurement._ ”

Crowley smothered an irritable hiss.

“ _The smell; fire and brimstone accompany the beast wherever it goeth._ Now, that has got to be unfortunate. Not exactly a dead giveaway, mind you, so you’ll forgive me for overlooking this one. And finally, _the beast transforms into a great snake._ That was what tipped me off. I knew Ezra had these books, of course, but I figured he wouldn’t know the first thing about using them. It wasn’t until after I’d got my hands on this volume here that I remembered the great big snake he kept in that bookshop of his, and, well, it was easy enough to connect the dots from there.”

With that, Blackburn snapped the enormous book shut and crouched down just outside the circle, his face nearly level with Crowley’s. 

“There. You see? I’m not totally unreasonable. I’ve answered some of your questions. Now it’s time you returned the favor.”

“Fair’s fair,” Crowley agreed, keeping a measured distance from the man’s face. “But it’s as I told you before, I can’t do anything for you while I’m in the circle.”

“I don’t believe you,” Blackburn stated immediately. “Everything I’ve read says that you should be able to perform a limited amount of magic within this specific circle.” Blackburn reopened the book and flipped to a marked page. “ _The creature shall not be able to perform magic of any kind except that which has been deemed appropriate by its master._ ” 

“You’re getting your information from a seven hundred year old source,” Crowley hissed slowly, as though he were trying to explain something very simple to someone very stupid. “I’m telling you, if you want my help you’ll have to let me out first.”

“You know I can’t do that. Not without an alternate binding spell.”

Crowley flicked his tongue dismissively. “That’s not my problem.”

With a frustrated sigh Blackburn stood up. At that exact moment the ground below them vibrated once before falling still. Crowley didn’t react, waiting to see if Blackburn would notice the subtle disturbance. He appeared not to have, concentrating instead on flipping a single page in the book back and forth. 

Trapped as Crowley was in the circle and cut off from his magical abilities, there was no warning for what came next. 

With a loud _**BOOM!**_ the door to the room flew open, so hard and so fast one of the hinges disconnected. The harsh, grinding sound of metal on metal split his ears. Blackburn spun around at the sudden intrusion, book hanging limp from his hand, just as Crowley managed to wriggle to the far end of the circle with a weak hiss.

The lighting outside the room was far softer than the fluorescents overhead, bathing the figure in the doorway with a soft yellow glow from behind. Crowley felt rather than saw Aziraphale as he stepped into the small space, filling the room with his presence. If Crowley were currently inhabiting the body of a mammal, his hair follicles would have been standing on end. Instead, he scented the air and recoiled at the taste. The room smelled electric, suffused with the hint of ozone before a lightning strike, as the power radiating from the angel split the diatomic oxygen molecules in the air into their individual component atoms. 

Blackburn stood between the circle and the angel. Aziraphale seemed to stare right through him, and Crowley felt a non-corporeal nudge against his consciousness, beyond gentle, the angel seeking assurance that Crowley was alright. Crowley summoned as much strength as he could and met Aziraphale’s aura with his own, affirming what he could.

_Danger,_ he hissed mentally, attempting to project his thoughts for Aziraphale to read. 

Aziraphale didn’t seem to notice - that, or Crowley’s mind was impenetrable from inside the circle. The angel’s gaze zeroed in on Blackburn, who had failed to notice the split-second exchange.

“What—how—?” Blackburn spluttered. He pulled the book to his chest and stood a little straighter. “This is private property. How did you get in here?”

“Oh, I let myself in,” Aziraphale replied, in a tone that might have been breezy on its surface. Instead it gave Crowley chills. 

“Well, I’d appreciate it if you’d let yourself _out,_ ” Blackburn retorted. “You’re breaking and entering.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that would be a problem. After all, you seemed to have no issue letting yourself into my bookshop.” Aziraphale took a meandering step forward, calm and confident. “In fact, I’m only here to recover my stolen property.” His eyes flicked to Crowley. “And the snake.”

_Leave. Get out now!_

Crowley struggled fruitlessly against the bonds that held him, willing them to break by force of will alone. He wanted to scream, to thrash, to lunge and strike and sink his teeth into the human separating him from the angel, but the limitations Blackburn had placed on the circle would not let him. Crowley was agonizingly helpless. There was no way to warn Aziraphale of the danger he was in, and Crowley realized with mounting hysteria that he was most likely going to have to lie there and watch as Aziraphale was discorporated in front of him.

Blackburn seemed to have regained his composure and decided to try a different tactic. “Ezra, my friend, you _know_ me. I had every intention of returning those things I borrowed. _And_ your pet.” Blackburn threw a wrinkled-nose glance over his shoulder. “I only wanted a favor. Anthony was the one who had to go and be difficult about it.”

“I can’t imagine it was that simple if you had to lock him up this way.”

“Don’t play dumb,” Blackburn said, chuckling humorlessly. “Surely you made the deal yourself. For God's sake, you might as well have a collar around our poor Anthony’s neck considering what a short leash you have him on. Protecting your bookshop, chauffeuring you around, using him to get all that money, all those books. Never having to work a day in your life.” Blackburn stopped, and amended in a sickly sweet tone, “Oh, don’t think I’m judging you for it! On the contrary. You and I, Ezra. We’re the same.” 

Aziraphale’s brow was furrowed in suspicion. “What deal am I supposed to have made?” he asked. 

Blackburn laughed again. “Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you got everything you have now without making a _deal with the devil._ ”

Aziraphale flinched. “Your soul," he murmured, comprehension dawning at last. "You want to sell your soul.”

“Close!” said Blackburn. “But no. Been there, done that, so to speak. No, you see, what I want is a refund.”

Aziraphale’s eyes flicked to Crowley, who tried to confirm the suspicion within them by waving his tail. 

“You’re telling me you sold your soul, and now you want it back?” Aziraphale asked, flabbergasted. “Why?”

“Didn’t think I needed it. Wasn’t exactly doing me a whole lot of good, and it seemed a small price to pay for everything I’ve ever wanted in return.” Blackburn sighed theatrically. “Unfortunately, none of that matters if you aren’t able to appreciate it. Who knew you needed a soul to experience the range of human emotion, am I right?”

“And you thought Crowley could restore it for you,” Aziraphale said, the puzzle pieces slotting into place. He sounded pained, and for a split second Crowley saw a flash of pity in the angel’s narrowed eyes. A flicker of fear raced through him. Was it possible that Aziraphale might feel sympathetic toward Blackburn’s plight and side with him? Up until recently, the two had been the best of friends. Would he try and persuade Crowley into returning Blackburn’s soul to him? 

“But he wasn’t the one you sold it to in the first place?” Aziraphale asked.

“No. But I figured any old demon would do, right? Even one as pathetic as this.” Blackburn spared Crowley a disgusted look, which was returned tenfold. “So you see, Ezra, I’m only borrowing him. I didn’t even mean for it to take this long, only he’s not being very cooperative. But don’t worry. You can have him back once he delivers. Or what’s left of him, anyway.” 

Blackburn laughed again, a cruel and joyless sound. Aziraphale waited until it died down to speak again.

“I can’t allow this to continue,” he said, the last shreds of warmth in his tone gone flat and cold.

Blackburn shrugged dismissively. “You don’t really have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

Blackburn shook his head. “Look, Ezra. I like you. Let’s not fight about this. Walk away now and I’ll let you live.” 

_Listen to him, please, listen to him,_ Crowley begged, frantically scouring the perimeter of his circle, searching for a point of weakness. _I’ll be fine, just **go.**_

There was a beat where the tension reached its crescendo. Aziraphale locked eyes with Crowley from across the room, and it was to him that his next words were directed. “I can’t.”

Blackburn sighed. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, though to Crowley's ears he did not sound sorry at all. A triumphant smile had overtaken his face, and he raised one arm and snapped his fingers.

In an instant, thick black bindings materialized from the ether to wind their way around the angel’s arms, pinning them to his sides. Aziraphale gazed on neutrally as they coiled tighter and tighter, digging canyons into the soft fabric of his clothing and squeezing hard against his flesh. Like vines, they crept further up, wrapping themselves around his throat to cut off the airway and blood supply. Crowley watched in horror as Aziraphale’s pale face began to darken, red then blue then purple. Yet just as it appeared the bonds might squeeze the life out of him, they fell away, vanishing into thin air as quickly as they had come.

Blackburn’s jaw dropped open. Free to move, Aziraphale prepared to take a step forward, but was stopped as a burst of purple flame erupted in Blackburn’s hand and flew threw the air toward him. It never hit its mark. With a great _whoosh_ the flame was doused in midair with all the effort it took to snuff out a candle. 

For the first time, Blackburn looked afraid, the whites of his eyes completely visible around the iris. “I don’t understand,” he cried, darting a backwards glance toward Crowley. “How is he doing this from inside the circle?” 

Another shot of fire, deflected in an instant. With a roar of frustration, Blackburn turned and dove toward the circle, foot poised to come down hard on the serpent’s fragile elongated spine. Crowley gazed upward in horror as Blackburn’s heel approached, unable to squeeze his eyes shut without eyelids, forced to watch as it rapidly came closer, closer, closer. 

It stopped abruptly, the shoe pausing a scant few inches from Crowley’s body. Blackburn, apparently frozen in place, held the awkward position as his eyes roved the room, darting back and forth frantically in his head. 

Across the small space, Aziraphale’s lax fingers curled into a fist. Blackburn’s body seized up and lurched away from the circle, operating like a marionette on strings. Slowly, horribly, he knelt at Aziraphale’s feet, neck craned upwards to stare into the angel’s blazing expression. The tendons in Blackburn’s throat were standing on end, the skin of his face mottled and purple. 

“You,” Blackburn whispered through clenched teeth, a bit of spit frothing on his lips. “What _are_ you?” 

“More than you could ever be, diminished as you are,” the angel said, his voice no longer clear but resonating with an abundance of choral tones. 

Aziraphale placed his hands on either side of Blackburn’s head, forcing him to stare directly into his eyes. His soft, round body was fading at the edges, leaking light as the iron-clad grip he held over his corporeal form lessened further and further. Vision had never been Crowley’s strong suit, especially as a snake, and he struggled to keep Aziraphale in sight, bracing himself for the moment his body would dissolve completely. 

He didn’t have to wait long. A rush of Holy energy flooded the room, accompanied by an illumination so bright it was blinding. The last remnants of Aziraphale’s human body melted away, leaving a spectacle of light in its place. Aziraphale’s angelic form resembled a sun dog, somehow occupying a finite space and yet incomprehensible in its size, great enough to span the horizon and yet confined to the little silver box they found themselves in. Crowley had never been able to see the heads, whatever they were, the griffin, ox, and lion, but he assumed that’s what each enormous ball of light represented. Slowly, they grew larger, brighter, so white they were almost blue. Four became one. One became nothing. A roaring sound began, accompanied by a rush of air so powerful Crowley could feel the vibration of the sound waves all the way to his bones. It went on forever, spanning time, stretching out, and just when Crowley thought it might never end, that he’d surely gone deaf and blind, it was over. 

When his vision returned Blackburn was gone. A ring of white ash on the concrete floor was all that remained in the space he had just occupied, accompanied by the strong, lingering smell of burnt hair. Aziraphale stood where Crowley had last seen him, round, soft and human-shaped once more, a single curl out of place the only indication that anything out of the ordinary had transpired. Crowley watched as the steely glint in Aziraphale’s eyes faded and went out, the crow’s feet at his temples losing their definition, becoming soft and gentle once more. Slowly, the angel turned toward Crowley, and his expression became something haunted, grief-stricken.

“Crowley,” he breathed, leaping over the discarded book and making straight for the circle.

The toe of one of Aziraphale’s brogues smudged a line in the chalk, and the bonds that held Crowley in place suddenly eased. For the first time in five days he felt free enough to breathe again, free enough to maneuver where and how he wanted, and yet too weak to even make the attempt. Instead he lay very still, scenting the air every so often with his thin tongue to make sure that Aziraphale had not left him.

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered, and suddenly the angel was down on his knees, radiating warmth and security in waves like the pulse of a heartbeat. Crowley ached to move toward it, but the most he managed was a feeble wriggle with the tip of his tail. 

“Can you move at all?”

Crowley shook his head as well as any creature lacking a neck possibly could. 

“It’s alright, don’t try, don’t try. I’ve got you.”

Aziraphale unwound the thick scarf from around his neck and ever so gently guided Crowley’s limp body into its folds. The material was soft and warm and fragrant with the scent of the angel’s skin. Crowley burrowed into it and felt himself hugged against the angel’s chest so tight that it hurt. After five days trapped in the bitter cold, Aziraphale’s body heat was the most comforting thing he’d ever felt, like slipping into a warm bath after getting caught in the rain. 

“I’m sorry, Crowley, I’m so sorry,” Aziraphale continued to murmur, his voice choked with emotion. “You were right about everything. I should have listened to you from the beginning. It's all my fault. It was _my_ book Blackburn stole, the one he used to summon you. It came into my possession ages ago. I had hidden it away for safekeeping, but somehow he found it.”

“Oh yeah, real _sssafe,_ ” Crowley mumbled, only somewhat bitterly. 

“I was a fool. A damned fool!" Aziraphale said fiercely. "But you're safe now, Crowley, I swear it. I won't let anything else happen to you." Aziraphale stood up from his crouch. "I’m taking you home.” 

Dimly, Crowley wondered if _home_ meant the company of the angel’s bookshop or the emptiness of his flat in Mayfair. He didn’t think it would matter, so long as Aziraphale stayed with him.

The uncomfortably bright light Crowley had grown accustomed to over the last few days suddenly vanished, and Crowley registered that they had left the room he’d been kept in. Maneuvering his head out of the scarf folds, he attempted to peer around to gain his bearings. 

“Where…?”

Aziraphale understood the question without his having finished it. 

“Walk-in refrigerator.”

“In his house?”

“Yes.” 

Sure enough, when Crowley looked around they were in the middle of an enormous at-home chef’s kitchen. Granite countertops, reflective backsplash, and top of the line appliances sparkled with disuse. 

“Oh, for Satan’s sake, this is why people shouldn’t be allowed to hoard money,” Crowley hissed, using the last of his energy to get his point across. “They go and build things like walk-in refrigerators in a kitchen that’s never been touched.”

Aziraphale laughed deliriously and Crowley felt himself being clutched even tighter. His vision was beginning to blur around the edges, and Crowley realized with a bolt of panic that he was losing consciousness. Aziraphale must have felt him tense, because the next second he was shushing him and stroking a barely-there fingertip against Crowley’s body through the scarf.

“Shh,” Aziraphale murmured. “It’s alright. Rest now. I’ve got you.” 

Powerless to resist and fading fast, Crowley obeyed, allowing the exhaustion he’d been battling for the last week to take him.

The world went dark. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Please check out the amazing fan art for this chapter, courtesy of armae!](https://armae.tumblr.com/post/190556903315/envy-the-subtle-serpent-chapter-1)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter.

As it turned out, Aziraphale’s promise to take Crowley home had meant the bookshop. More specifically, the flat above the bookshop, inside the seldom-used bedroom atop the never-used bed. 

Crowley was not quite conscious enough to appreciate the gesture. The past week had taken its toll, and it was there that he spent the next few weeks hibernating in serpent form, leaving a series of noodle-shaped prints in the dust that covered Aziraphale’s moth-eaten duvet. 

When at last he permanently awoke, Crowley found he had just enough strength to heal the damage that had been done to his serpent form and not an ounce more. Aziraphale had performed a few human procedures while he’d been sleeping, cleaning and dressing his wounds, but had hesitated to use his own divine magic in case it might do further harm. That had probably been the right decision; just being in proximity to the angel’s smiting had sapped what little strength remained to Crowley prior to rescue, and he shuddered to imagine the kind of damage that power might have done if performed on him directly.

Thus, transformation back to human form eluded him. Crowley didn’t mind much, now that his aches and pains had vanished, and he spent the next few days after he’d awoke filling Aziraphale in on the details of his capture. It was difficult to talk about at length, as either one of them was liable to get upset. Prolonged conversations usually ended with Aziraphale dissolving into apologies, and so they kept things short and simple, returning to old topics and reminiscing when the strain became too much. 

All in all, time passed rather peacefully. Crowley was happy to be in the bookshop, and happier still to be in Aziraphale’s unwavering company. Days blurred into weeks, uninterrupted but for the occasional ring of the telephone. It was almost always Anathema. The angel had taken the liberty of reassuring her that everything was alright soon after rescuing Crowley, and she had returned to Tadfield, though with the caveat that Crowley call her as soon as he was well enough to do so. Crowley protested against the idea of Aziraphale holding the phone for him, and maintained that he would return her call once he was human-shaped again. 

It wasn’t long before Crowley realized he was capable of making that transformation, if he wanted to. Crowley wondered if Aziraphale could sense it too, and that perhaps they were both in on the charade of his continued serpentry. It was a fool’s hope, of course, but the angel was liable to send him home for good once he was well enough, and Crowley couldn’t resist the temptation to stay by his side just a bit longer. 

Eventually, it had to end. 

The catalyst was a whiff of brimstone, floating surreptitiously into the bookshop from just outside the front door. Crowley was on the alert immediately and slithered down from the top of his favorite windowsill to find the source. The culprit: a letter that had been pushed through the mail slot, still smoking around the seal. 

Crowley tried to grasp it in his mouth to bring it upstairs. When that didn’t work, he attempted to fit it in the coil of his tail tip, but this too failed. Frustrated, and growing more apprehensive by the minute, Crowley mustered up all the strength that remained to him to change back to his human form. 

As he’d suspected for some time now, he was perfectly capable of doing so. The transition was smooth and seamless, and after materializing a fresh set of clothes onto his body Crowley headed upstairs in search of Aziraphale. Unused to two legs after so long with none, he clung to the rickety old banister, but otherwise managed the journey on his own.

“You’ve got mail,” Crowley announced, appearing behind Aziraphale in the tiny yellow kitchen above the shop. 

The lace curtains over the window fluttered as Aziraphale whirled around, a tiny gasp flying from his open mouth.

“Oh,” he breathed, scrabbling for and hastily drying his hands on a tea towel. “It’s you.”

“It’s me?” Crowley repeated, amused. “Who else might it have been?”

“You know what I mean.” Aziraphale waved the towel disparagingly at him before putting it aside. “Goodness, let me look at you. I know it hasn’t been that long, but I’ve missed this form.”

There were pros and cons to both, Crowley thought. Aziraphale had spent the last few weeks stroking his scales and allowing him to rest in his lap, or on his shoulders in between carrying him from place to place. Crowley found that he would miss the contact now that he was human-shaped once more. 

“I’m the same me as I ever was,” he said, slightly uncomfortable under the angel’s scrutiny.

“Yes, of course you are. I know that. It’s just different,” Aziraphale insisted. “I wasn’t sure how long you would remain in that form. I know you’ve mentioned before that you sometimes feared you wouldn’t be able to change back, and I thought...”

Crowley waved off-handedly. “I was mostly kidding.”

“Yes, well, still.” Aziraphale couldn’t quite hide the smile that tugged at his lips. “It’s good to see you looking more like yourself.” 

“Thanks,” Crowley muttered, an embarrassing heat rising to his cheeks. Face to face, it occurred to him for the first time that he had forgotten to miracle up a pair of sunglasses when swapping forms. With an uncomfortable cough, Crowley broke their eye contact and looked for something to distract from the conversation. 

“I’ll just take this, shall I?” he said, plucking the tea tray Aziraphale had been preparing off the counter. Without waiting for a response, he lead the way out to the seldom used sitting room, miracling a pair of shades onto his face on the way. Aziraphale trailed behind him, rummaging through a few drawers in the cluttered space and eventually withdrawing a sword-shaped letter opener. 

A fire was crackling in the hearth, casting a soft orange glow around the little room. Crowley sat down in the middle of a worn leather sofa and placed the tea on the table. To his surprise, Aziraphale squeezed in beside him, bringing their thighs together side by side, nearly close enough to touch. Crowley budged over and made room before offering the letter, which Aziraphale accepted. After removing his glasses from an inside pocket, Aziraphale sliced the envelope open and slipped the document free. His eyes scanned the page.

“It’s from Dagon!” Aziraphale cried. 

“What? No!”

“Yes! Look, it says right here at the bottom.”

Crowley leaned in hastily. Sure enough, Dagon’s sigil was scrawled in red right at the bottom of the page, glowing faintly. 

“That explains the stench,” Crowley said, wrinkling his nose as if he himself did not carry around the trace of brimstone. “Hang on. Are we certain it’s addressed to you?”

“Fairly. It is my name at the top,” Aziraphale indicated.

“Well, go on then, what does it say?” 

There was a short pause as Aziraphale’s eyes moved rapidly from side to side. 

“It’s a thank you letter.”

“Oh, it _must_ be for you, then. Six thousand years and I don’t think Dagon’s ever thanked me once.” Crowley groused. “Why exactly are you being thanked?” 

“It says here that they appreciate my timeliness in dispatching Eugene Blackburn back to Hell... and look forward to my securing further souls... as part of our agreement… Oh, this is ridiculous!” Aziraphale flung the letter away in frustration.

Crowley quickly snagged it out of Aziraphale’s lap and brought it up to his nose. “Agreement? What agreement?” he asked, barely keeping the note of panic at bay. Agreement sounded suspiciously close to Arrangement.

“Oh, bother, I forgot to mention it. It’s nothing, really. While you were in that circle I contacted Dagon to see if they might be able to help me in figuring out where you’d gotten off to.” 

“You what? Oh, no no no no no. Did you sign anything?” Crowley’s face crumpled at Aziraphale’s guilty expression. “Oh, angel, what have I always told you?”

“Now, now, before you work yourself up, take a look at it,” Aziraphale said soothingly. He snapped his wrist in mid-air, and immediately a pile of documents appeared in his hand. Crowley snatched them up and began reading through them. 

Sure enough, the contract was demonic in nature, an agreement between Aziraphale and Dagon, only the trademark trappings and sinister clauses weren’t there. Somehow, the angel had negotiated his way into a mutualistic partnership with Hell’s most dangerous beaurocrat. Crowley could feel his jaw hanging open but was too stunned to close it. 

“This is… I don’t… How did you manage…?”

“Learned from the best,” Aziraphale twinkled, and he nudged Crowley’s shoulder affectionately with his own. 

“I can see that. Though, are you sure you’re alright with all of this? I mean, what’s this whole ‘securing souls’ business?”

“It’s nothing I haven’t done before for you. And besides," Aziraphale continued pointedly, "you and I both know there are some humans out there who will never be influenced toward the light, no matter how hard one tries.”

“I hear that,” Crowley muttered under his breath, flipping another page. “Sort of makes you a double agent, though, doesn’t it? Smiting evil on both payrolls.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Aziraphale said promptly. “My primary goal is now and always will be to serve the Almighty. If those ambitions happen to overlap with Dagon’s… Well, I can hardly be blamed.” 

Crowley snorted. “And the Falling Clause? That seems pretty self-serving.”

“Consider it an insurance policy,” Aziraphale said, and he reached for his cup of tea. Crowley continued to scan the pages as Aziraphale sipped quietly.

“The thing I don’t understand is,” the angel broke in at length, “if Blackburn had already sold his soul away, what use would Dagon have for his body?”

There was a short pause as Crowley reluctantly set the document aside. “Ah, yeah, well. See the thing is, the punishments of Hell carry a bit more bite if you’ve got a body to inflict them upon.”

“Oh.”

“They don’t call Dagon Master of Torments for nothing.” Crowley scrutinized Aziraphale’s face. “Does that upset you?”

“No. Not at all. Not after what he did to you,” Aziraphale replied firmly, and Crowley took one look at his expression and believed him. 

Crowley hadn’t wanted to go into detail about everything that had transpired during his captivity, but vague references and sparse descriptions had eventually driven Aziraphale to confront him for the full story. After some deliberation Crowley had come clean. 

It had been difficult to recount. Every gasp, every flinch from Aziraphale had set Crowley on edge and made him hesitate to continue. When he got to the part where Blackburn had yanked out his fangs with a pair of needle nose pliers, Aziraphale had become so angry the room started to shake, a few books tumbling from their piles and a potted plant slipping from its sill and breaking on the floor. Crowley had stopped talking then, and the angel had apologized profusely for letting his temper slip. They hadn’t discussed it since.

Aziraphale, likely remembering the same thing, broke the silence:

“So what exactly will happen to him, now that he’s down there?” 

“He’ll have fallen to whichever circle of sin he subscribed to in life,” Crowley replied. 

“And which circle is that?” Aziraphale asked curiously. “Vanity? Pride? Greed?”

“Nah. Envy was his thing,” Crowley sniffed. “Wanted everything he didn’t have. Jealous of what came so easily to others. The good looks, the fancy car, the big house, the great job.”

“Sounds like greed to me.”

Crowley shrugged. “They look similar enough on the outside, sure, but the key difference with Envy is the comparison."

“ _Sin that looks with grudging hatred upon other men's gifts and good fortune, taking every opportunity to run them down or deprive them of their happiness,_ " Aziraphale quoted thoughtfully. “Yes, I suppose I see that now. He always was envious of my books.” Aziraphale seemed to hesitate a moment before adding the next line as an afterthought. “And of you.”

Crowley waited a moment to see if Aziraphale would elaborate before speaking. “Yeah, well. That’s humans for you. Always wanting more, no appreciation for what they’ve already got. The man directed the best library in all of England and still wasn’t satisfied with his lot in life.”

Crowley paused, expecting Aziraphale to chime in with a little angelic wisdom, but was met with solemn silence. Aziraphale stared straight ahead seemingly without seeing. His overbright eyes reflected the light of the fire. 

“What’s the matter?” 

“It’s nothing,” Aziraphale said softly, still not looking at him. “Just, well, I can sort of see their perspective, in a way.”

“How’s that?” asked Crowley, leaning forward with interest. 

There was a beat of silence. A little wrinkle appeared between Aziraphale’s eyebrows, and he seemed to choose his next words very carefully. “Wanting what you can’t have.”

Crowley frowned. “You can have anything you want, angel.”

At that, Aziraphale gave him a peculiar look, his wide eyes lingering on Crowley’s face. Hungry and sad, as if the demon were a display of sweets in a closed bakery. 

“Not everything,” Aziraphale said softly, and Crowley nearly flinched as the angel’s hand brushed ever so slightly up against his own. “Not _you_.”

“You have me,” Crowley protested.

“I do and I don’t,” said Aziraphale, as though that explained everything.

“I don’t understand.”

In a novel gesture, Crowley felt the stroke of a gentle finger across his knuckles, and then the firmer pressure of the angel's fingers twining through his own. For a few frightening seconds it felt as though his heart had forgotten how to beat, and then as if to compensate it picked up its rhythm double-time, thundering so loud he was certain the angel would be able to hear it. Crowley's hand was clammy, but he didn’t dare move it away, didn't dare move his body at all, waiting with bated breath for Aziraphale to explain what was happening.

The calm, soft tone of Aziraphale’s voice was belied by a slight tremor. “Surely you must know by now that I love you,” he began, punctuating his words with an affectionate squeeze to Crowley's hand. “I know I haven’t been the best at showing it over the years. I can admit that. It took me a long time to realize it myself, that what I was feeling toward you was much more than tolerance for an adversary, and even more than fondness for a friend.” 

" _Oh,_ " Crowley managed weakly, unsticking his throat with a tremendous amount of effort. 

“I guess I had hoped that after last year, after our own side, things might be different," Aziraphale continued. "But when nothing changed I assumed you didn’t think of me that way.”

Crowley blanched. “I _do_ think of you that way. How could you think for one _ssssecond_ that I don’t?”

There was a moment of utter silence as Aziraphale gaped at him. 

“You never said.” 

“I thought you knew! I thought we were, you know,” Crowley gesticulated wildly. “More than friends. Just unspoken. Couldn’t say it aloud, never knew who might be listening.”

“You mean all this time?”

Crowley nodded. “I mean, obviously not the whole time. But after The Arrangement, I thought well, that was it, wasn’t it? Our commitment to one another over Heaven and Hell.” Crowley’s entire face felt hot, from the tips of his ears to his collar. He resisted the urge to cradle his head in his hands. “Pathetic, isn’t it?”

“No more pathetic than my mistake,” Aziraphale said at once. “I should have noticed. I should have _said_ something.”

“ _I_ should have said something,” Crowley argued, flinging his hands up in the air. There was a pause as they stared at one another, both seeming to recognize the absurdity of the situation, and after a moment they began to laugh. 

“And to think, all this wasted time…” The angel’s quiet chuckle turned into a soft sigh, and Crowley glanced up in time to see a single tear slip down his round cheek. 

“Hey, now.” Crowley braved the space between them to sweep it away with his thumb. “No need to cry.”

“I know,” Aziraphale sniffed, and he reached up to cradle Crowley’s hand against his own cheek. “Truly, I know. It just breaks my heart to think that this whole time you thought that was as well as I could love you.” 

Crowley shook his head vehemently. “I don’t need that extra stuff. This, being with you, it’s enough for me. It’s always been enough. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.” 

Their eyes met, and Aziraphale’s gaze was softer and more tender than Crowley had ever seen it. Crowley forced himself not to look away. 

“Let me give you more,” Aziraphale said as he removed Crowley’s hand from his face. He brought the palm to his lips and kissed it, leaving the skin there tingling. “Let me give all of myself to you. I want you to have it.” 

“Aziraphale…” Crowley started, but he wasn’t able to finish. The angel was suddenly close, closer than Crowley could ever remember him having been in six thousand years. The room seemed to spin ever so slightly as though he'd downed a bottle of wine, and he could smell Aziraphale, could feel Aziraphale’s hands on his face, thumbs stroking the harsh line of his cheekbones, warm lips against his forehead, the tip of his nose, the corner of his mouth. 

“Let me make up for lost time,” Aziraphale whispered against his lips, and Crowley’s heart felt on the verge of exploding out of his chest.

“Angel, what are you doing to me?” Crowley breathed. His fingers were trembling, breath coming in short, sharp pants. Slowly, carefully, he brought one hand up to cup Aziraphale’s chin, brushing the pad of his thumb across the softness of his skin. 

“Is it not alright?”

“It’s not _not_ alright,” Crowley managed.

There was a hand on his cheek, and Aziraphale’s fingertips trailed over the arm of his sunglasses. “May I?” 

Crowley nodded, and Aziraphale gently pulled the frames away from Crowley’s face. His hands returned, soft and gentle and Crowley closed his eyes as the angel leaned in.

Their lips met once, a press so slight it was barely there, a whisper of the real thing. Crowley drew back a fraction, the breath shivering out of him, and Aziraphale trailed in his wake, bestowing feather-light kisses as he lay Crowley back against the couch. The leather squelched in protest as Aziraphale hovered over him.

“Alright?” Aziraphale whispered, drawing back so that his eyes could flicker over Crowley’s heated face. 

Crowley managed a nod, and when next Aziraphale kissed him he tried to move his lips in return, a soft, lingering slide. The breath was whistling rapidly in and out of his nose, over-loud in his ears. Crowley curled his fist in the front of the angel’s jumper, neither pushing nor pulling, merely gripping on for dear life as the entire world turned upside down around him. After a moment he turned his head, and Aziraphale pressed a kiss to his temple. 

Aziraphale drew back sharply.

“Oh, Crowley, are you crying?”

“No,” Crowley lied, a slight crack in his voice. 

In an instant Aziraphale had sat back up and pulled Crowley with him. The angel was far stronger than he looked, and Crowley came up easily, curling over his own lap like a ragdoll as soon as he was released. The moment Aziraphale’s warm weight was gone Crowley missed it, and he scrubbed frustratedly at his eyes with his fist, willing them to stop producing tears. 

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to cry. It’s these _sssstupid bodies._ ” 

“I understand,” Aziraphale murmured, unfailingly kind. 

“It’s all just a bit overwhelming.” 

“Shh. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

With a low exhale, Crowley leaned forward until their foreheads were pressed together. Aziraphale was warm and close, his presence soothing, and Crowley concentrated on catching his breath as the world slowly righted itself. The flow of tears trickled to a stop.

In the midst of this Crowley felt a nudge against his hand and looked down; Aziraphale had located his sunglasses and was attempting to return them. A fresh wave of tears spilled over at the kindness of the gesture, quickly smothered as Crowley attempted to regain control. Wordlessly, he accepted the glasses from Aziraphale only to toss them across the room.

“No more walls between us. No more barriers,” Crowley said decisively, taking Aziraphale’s empty hand in his own and squeezing tightly. “From now on, nothing comes between us.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Aziraphale said softly. He withdrew a handkerchief from a pocket and offered it to Crowley, who mopped his face before handing it back, miraculously clean. 

“Better?” Aziraphale asked, smoothing a lock of hair away from Crowley's face.

Crowley nodded, and Aziraphale squeezed their joined hands. 

“Good. There’s something I wanted to show you.”

Before Crowley could protest Aziraphale stood and walked over to the tiny brick fireplace across the room. Crowley trailed after him, and once beside him Aziraphale drew away the sheet covering a cardboard box. Inside was a pile of dusty old books, haphazardly stacked on top of one another. 

“What’s this?” Crowley asked, looking from the books to Aziraphale for an explanation. His mind was far away at that moment — still stuck on the sofa and on the kiss they had shared.

Aziraphale reached in and lifted one, hefting it in his hand before holding it out to Crowley. Hesitantly, Crowley accepted the volume and turned it in his hands: _Le Grand Grimoire ou Dragon Rogue._

“The books from my safe,” Aziraphale explained. “I recovered them from Blackburn’s house.”

“I’d almost forgotten,” Crowley muttered, tracing a finger over the embossed depiction of a demon on the front cover. Memories were flooding back, unbidden: the cold, gritty surface of the concrete in Blackburn’s refrigerator, the harsh lighting overhead, the threat of a boot on his back. Crowley shook his head to clear it. “It’s a good thing you got them all back. Wouldn’t want to risk them falling into the wrong hands again.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Aziraphale said, standing up a bit straighter. “I _don’t_ want them falling into the wrong hands. Not ever again. In fact,” the angel took a deep, steadying breath, “I think the world would be far better off without these books in it at all. Which is why I think we should destroy them.”

Crowley blinked. “What? No. Aziraphale, no. These are your _books,_ ” Crowley said quickly, pushing the one in his hands back toward Aziraphale. The angel refused to take it, retreating a step with his hands clasped neatly behind his back. 

“Not anymore,” Aziraphale stated. “I don’t want them.”

“What do you mean you don’t want them?” Crowley’s volume was rising. “They’re valuable, aren’t they?”

Aziraphale frowned. “If you really think I care about the _money_ — ”

“No, that’s, agh—!” Crowley shook his head quickly. “It’s not about the money! I mean the contents, what’s inside them. Who knows when some occult knowledge might come in handy? You should at least hang on to them in case we need them as a resource in the future.”

Aziraphale folded his arms defiantly across his chest. “And risk them getting stolen again?”

“That — it — mngh.” Crowley deflated. “Well, what if we went through them? Only kept the really important ones?” 

“What could possibly be more important than your safety?” Aziraphale asked, eyebrow raised. Crowley was starting to flounder. “Crowley, look at me. _Look_ at me.”

Crowley stopped fidgeting and looked. Aziraphale’s gaze was sure and steady, his tone one of complete calm. 

“I understand what you’re trying to say. These books are priceless, and some of them do contain information that might one day be of value. But we can never completely guarantee their protection. As long as they’re around, they will always be a liability, a threat to your safety. And I never want to be the reason why your life is in danger. Not ever again.” Aziraphale’s gaze softened, and he reached a hand out to accept the book. “You’re always the one looking after me, Crowley. Won’t you allow me, just this once, to do the same for you?”

Crowley hesitated, looking from the book to Aziraphale's outstretched hand. It felt as though there was a war within himself, and he wasn’t sure if he was winning or losing. 

“You know I’d never ask you to do this,” he said eventually.

“I know,” Aziraphale replied. “It’s my choice.”

Crowley swallowed the lump in his throat. In all the years he'd known Aziraphale, the angel had never come close to treasuring anything the way he treasured his books. For Crowley to have his life considered of equal, perhaps even greater value, was simply unimaginable. But then, the angel had already surprised him once today, so perhaps it was not as far-fetched as it seemed. Crowley bit his lip and ran his thumb one last time over the demon on the cover. 

“Are you sure?” 

Aziraphale smiled sincerely. “My dear, I have never been more sure of anything in my life.”

And so, with a nod of acceptance Crowley relinquished the book into Aziraphale’s hands. Slowly, Aziraphale extended it toward the fire, pausing only once it was close enough for the flames to lick his fingers. The moment seemed to stretch on forever, until Crowley gave a fraction of a nod and Aziraphale let the book go.

It crashed into the charred log, sending up a shower of orange sparks. For a moment it sat pristine among the flames before a few tendrils of smoke began to curl from underneath it. When the first corner ignited Crowley winced, ready for Aziraphale to reach back into the fireplace and save it. But the angel was still as stone, watching the book burn with something like grim satisfaction written across his face.

Crowley slowly released the breath that he’d been holding and watched it crumble away into nothing. 

Aziraphale handed him a book, and on it went. For the next few minutes they took turns grabbing from the box and feeding books into the fire, which burned brighter and larger with each new addition. 

At length the box was emptied, save one final item. Crowley picked it up cautiously. It was not the largest, nor the oldest, nor the best kept of the lot, but somehow it was the most significant. It was Crowley’s book. The one that had caused him so much grief over the centuries. Enormous, hand-bound, and sweet-smelling with the scent of decay. This was the first time Crowley had ever even held it in his own hands. 

“Funny. It seemed a lot bigger, before,” Crowley remarked softly. He paused with his fingertips on the edge of the cover, poised to open it, but at the last second decided against it. There was nothing in there he wanted to see, and in that moment, he recognized that Aziraphale was right. It would be best if this book, like all the others, was never read by anyone ever again. 

With a _whoosh!_ Crowley dropped it in the fire. They watched in silence as it was quickly devoured, half a millennia worth of trouble reduced to smoke and ash. Aziraphale sought his hand in the space between them, and Crowley met his touch with a firm grip. 

Slowly, the pieces of the book fell away to grey powder, indistinguishable from the rest of the hearth’s contents. Crowley released a deep, cleansing sigh and turned to face the angel. 

“Can’t say that didn’t feel good,” he admitted, baring the tiniest of grins. 

Aziraphale’s eyes crinkled around the edges as he smiled.

“What? Aren’t you going to say ‘I told you so’?” Crowley prompted.

Aziraphale took a breath to speak, inhaled a lungful of smoke, and coughed. “I t-told… you so,” he managed, eyes watering.

“That’s what you get for being smug,” Crowley said, before dissolving into a coughing fit of his own. “Wow, is all of this just from the dust burning?"

“I’ll open a window,” Aziraphale offered, already moving in that direction. 

Crowley followed him over to the far wall and drew aside the curtain as Aziraphale propped open the grimy old pane. The cold London air was not as fresh as it had once been, but Crowley remembered a time when it had been worse and was comparatively grateful. Together they stood in front of the open frame, side by side as they had always been, though perhaps a fraction closer than ever before. As he looked out over the rooftops of Soho and into the city beyond, Crowley imagined he could taste the very beginnings of Spring on the breeze.

“Would you care to go out? My treat, of course," Crowley said. A long time had passed, much of it spent watching Aziraphale out of the corner of his eye.

The angel's gaze moved slowly from the view to Crowley's face, and he broke out into a breathtaking smile. “I’d like that very much,” he said.

And so they did, the angel and demon venturing out of the bookshop and onto the chilly streets below, hand in hand for what was to be the first of many times to come. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well folks, it took a lot of perseverance and roughly six months, but I'm happy to say this story is finally complete. And it's the first ever multi-chapter fic I've ever finished! I'm so happy to be able to share it with all of you. I never imagined the positive response I would receive, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your continued readership and support. 
> 
> I want to give a special shout out to my beta, xpityx, without whom this fic might never have seen the light of day. Additional shout outs to those of you who have stuck around since the beginning, and those of you who have left comments or drawn fan art. I treasure them all!
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading. I would love to hear from you. Thoughts, feelings, anything at all, please leave a comment below, and as always you can find me on tumblr @walkwithursus. 
> 
> <3

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos and comments greatly appreciated.


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